Doctors’ Fees

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31167, 17 September 1966, Page 14

Doctors’ Fees

Sir,—l hasten to assure John D. Herrick, I. Trew, and “New Zealander” that it was never my intention to imply that farmers contributed nothing to the national income. In fact, I would be one of the first to give productive farmers the credit they rightly deserve. My first letter referred to other persons “who came under the category of ‘spivs’ ” and who contributed nothing to the national income or health of the people. The portion in quotation marks was deleted and so the letter conveyed a wrong impression to some. I intended it to refer to such people as moneylenders, land speculators, rent racketeers, and people who live off the earnings of others. Surely doctors should have an income equal to these people. —Yours, etc., percy l. McMillan. Saltwater Creek. September 16, 1966.

Sir.—New Zealand should be freed from the stranglehold which the British Medical Association has on our medical services and this can be done only by the introduction of a State medical service. If doctors feel they can earn six guineas an hour, let them do so. Let them treat that section of the community with comparable incomes, but do not allow the B.M.A. to force this rate on working people, already struggling against the rising costs of living. Do not let the B.M.A. by their rigid control of the output of graduates at Otago, and their equally rigid control of the intake of immigrant doctors here, deprive New Zealand’s rural communities of urgent medical aid. If doctors faking in £4OOO a year in the cities do not want to practise in remote Southland or on the West Coast, then let the State medical officers take over there.—Yours, etc., NEW ZEALANDER. September 16, 1966.