MEDICAL FEES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 210, 5 September 1930, Page 6

MEDICAL FEES.

Professor Harvey Smith in his presidential address to the British Medical Association's Conference at Winnipeg laid stress upon. tJie fact that the economic organisation of medicine liad not kept pace with its scientific progress. He said that thirty per cent of patients were treated free hy physicians. It is a strange fact that unregistered practitioners generally get paid in cash and few of them make bad debts, while the registered doctor is frequently kept waiting a long time for his money and very often lie never gets paid at all. The cost of a medical education is great, and long years''have to be spent in training. Even when fully qualified, the doctor has to establish a practice, and thie means further months of "waiting 'before an' adequate salary can 'be earned. The tinregistcred man may have had no. special training; indeed, he frequently glories in the fact that he is untrammelled by medical education. He may assure.patients that he could easily have cured them in a week had they come to him first instead of going to "one of those doctors." Not for a moment; do those who consult him .dream of refusing,to pay his modest fee in coin of the realm. They perhaps feel that the potentcy of the cure would, 'lie negatived by any failure to minister to the material welfare of one who frequently assures them that he is 'boycotted toy the profession owing to jealousy of his success. . Yet when: a fullyTqualified practitioner is called in a number of; people -well able to pay neglect 'to do so, and'they seem to have a sort of .idea that a doctor ought to practise his art for the love of it. This led to Professor Harvey Smith advocating some system of health insurance as the only mejt<hod by which a competent medical service might 'be placed within the reach •'of all on a- satisfactory ba<sis. The free service given by the-medical profeseion in general to patients in poor circumstances constitutes one of the chief glories,of the calling. A doctor seldom refuses to attend a case merely 'because"he knows his prospects of;.payment are small. Few callings make greater sacrifices for the benefit of humanity. If people would be as scrupulous about paying their doctor as they are about paying'his unregistered rival there might be little cause to complain about the economic organisation of medicine. It is a matter of conscience. .