STATE DOCTORS

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23973, 14 June 1943, Page 3

STATE DOCTORS

CHANGES AFTER WAR POSSIBILITY IN AMERICA “The Press” Special Service AUCKLAND, June 11. "I feel reasonably certain that, in lipe with the progressive federal control of all phases of business and professional life, the doctor in the United States after the war may expect to be a salaried servant of the State,” said Lieutenant E. J. Ryan, U.S.N.R, pathologist at a United States Navy mobile hospital in' the Auckland district, when addressing the Catholic Men’s Luncheon Club. The speaker made it cleajr that he was expressing his own personal views, and not the opinion of. the United States Navy. The detailed plan by which such a system wo,iild be managed was, of course, largely conjectural. Lieutenant Jtyen said. Presumably, however, it tyould he dependent upon some system of taxation designed for that specific purpose. A major problem would be the equitable distribution of physcians according tp population, plus professional aptitude and training. The fate of thp specialist and the larger clinic groups would have to be decidedThere were many problem? that could only he sblyed on a trial and error basis. Lieutenant Ryan said he was by no means in fayour of such a system or salaried, federally dominated medicine. “It is possible to envisage certain apparent evils in such a system.,’’ he “notably a loss in individual initiative through lo?s of competition, a deterioration in certain standards of medical ethics, a decrease in the intimate physician-patien.t relationship, which is often important in successful treatment, and, above all, a certain amount of graift and corruption which may well accompany the political aspects of this change. In other words, the best politician may be the best doctor or, at .least, till most The fact had to be faqed, however, that changes were inevitable in a world, and .it was best that one resolved now, whether in medicine or in any othqr field, to adapt oneself to them, and thus contribute in every way possible to a more successful future.