The doctors who protest against the Minister of Health's ruling
that private patients shall not have free medicine seem to me fully justified in their attitude. Under the National Health Act every citizen is entitled to free treatment and free medicine. If he chooses to forgo the free treatment, and consult a doctor as a paying patient, why should he be compelled to forgo free medicine too ? The contention, I suppose, is that a doctor might prescribe unduly expensive medicines. So, of course, might a State doctor, but there are various checks that could be imposed in his case. But (i) there is no reason whatever to suppose that the doctor would in fact make his prescriptions unnecessarily costly ; (2) private patients are likely to be so few that it would be no great matter if he did ; and (3) if it were found that any doctor's prescriptions were substantially above the average figure he could be warned ; and in the last resort chemists in his area could be directed not to make his prescriptions up. This looks too much like penalising a patient for choosing to be a private patient—which, of course, he has a perfect right to be.
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