THE GOVERNMENT AND THE DOCTORS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1
Sra,—In your article in the issue of November 16th there is a slight error. The medical benefits under the Insurance Act do not emerge till January 15th, 1913, not January 1st. If
"the Government's only resource will be to hand 6s. 6d. by means of a postal order to each insured person," failing their coming to an arrangement with the doctors "—that, as I have repeatedly pointed out at the by-elections, is not
the National Insurance Act. The medical benefit is one of the five minimum benefits promised under the Act, and any departure or deviation therefrom is breach of contract with the working classes who have been contributing their 4d. on the faith of the representation that they will get
the five minimum benefits. As everyone knows who has studied the actuaries' reports, their original estimate of 4s. 6d.
for doctor and ls. 6d. for drugs was based on the assumption of 14,000,000 insured persons coming into the scheme at the outset, and that the doctors would accept service under the Act. That was the only bare workable possibility of the medical benefit, including attendance and drugs, being received by insured persons. No doctor in the United Kingdom will accept individual and isolated cases at the figure of Gs., and your imaginary working man is quite right. In the London Opera House speech (February 12th, 1912) Mr. Lloyd George said :—
" What will happen if the profession follows the advice of these extremists, declines to discuss terms, and refuses to have anything to do with the Act, refuses to recognize the Committees set up under a statute of the realm, and defies the law of the land? Nothing. (Laughter.) Nothing except this. All the safeguards in the Act for the protection of the medical profession would be wiped out at once. (Cheers.) It is as well that the working classes should clearly under. stand this. The general finance of the Act is, as Mr. Bonar
Law said in the House in the debate on the Opposition amendment to the third reading, "the most rotten method that anyone could conceive" and one "which brings com- panies into the Bankruptcy Court and the directors into
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