MEDICAL SERVICE

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 47, 19 November 1941, Page 8

MEDICAL SERVICE

Nationalization Coming In Australia

ATTITUDE OF PROFESSION (Received November IS, 6 p.m.) SYDNEY, November 18. The establishment of mobile X-ray units to examine school children is being considered by tlie Federal Health Minister, Mr. Holloway. lie said that a larger scheme of Xray examination, to include adults, would be introduced eventually. This would be part of a comprehensive plan for the nationalization of medical services. The question of national medical service is discussed in the current issue of the “Medical Journal of Australia.” Dr. R. D. Davey says: ‘‘To get a foretaste of medical socialism one has only to become a cog in a Governmentrun machine called the Arjny and to watch the high degree of medical service dispensed on sick parades in our militia camps

“As in the proposed State-run service, here every man has the right to demand medical attention for every conceivable ailment, small or large, real or imaginary, honest or tendentious, and—-this is the essential point —at no immediate cost to himself.” Dr. Davey urges that the example of New Zealand doctors in resisting a national medical service should be followed, and that “it is the duty of us at home to see that those of our members who are fighting abroad for the democratic way of life do not come home to hud that a system of medical Fascism has been foisted upon them in their absence.”