" ORGANISING HEALTH "
SIR,—From my own experience, I do not think there has been any abnormal suppression of letters on the two recent proposals for a National Health Service. I certainly got pretty sour comments on the first one into The Times and into your own paper. The curious lack of public discussion of the subject comes from other causes. In the first place, the bringing forward of a Socialist measure by an anti-Socialist Government (see Lord Hinchingbrooke's recent article) inevitably cuts out discussion. One side supports it because it is Socialist ; the other because it is the party line. Then there is the complete vagueness of both White Papers. It is difficult to approve or oppose the Govern- ment's solutions of a dozen knotty problems when one is not told what they are. The secrecy about rates of pay is, of course, tactical ; but I suspect that in such matters as the precise link between patient and doctor neither Government has really clear ideas. Thus I have seen no letter Pointing out the benefits of the new system. Its advocates confine them- selves to abusing the old, mainly on the grounds of personal indifference of doctors to those they serve, of casual routine work and of interminable delays. It is assumed that these failings, the age-old complaints against the State official, will be cured by making the doctors officials of the State.
The doctors themselves have been pretty silent, but, make no mistake about it, this latter.scheme is far more widely approved than the first. It frightens us far less than the alternative proposals of that Conservative Party to whom we would otherwise naturally appeal. When people who have always preached that Socialism is silly and disastrous adopt that system themselves they naturally bring forward such proposals as putting a learned profession under borough councillors. The present Government does at least pay some respect to the feelings of the craft by putting in authority those whom the doctors themselves recognise as authorities— the great medical schools. What the public reactions will be when the medical cards go out I do not know. But most of the profession will . . Keep a hold of nurse, For fear of finding something worse."
—Yours faithfully, DENIS BROWNE. 40 Knightsbridge Court, Sloane Street, S.W. i.
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