SOCIALISING THE DOCTORS

Evening Star, Issue 22721, 7 August 1937, Page 11

SOCIALISING THE DOCTORS

B.M.A. VIEW OF HEALTH INSURANCE WOULD REMOVE INCENTIVE TO RESEARCH [Per United Press Association.] HASTINGS, August G. Though the medical profession favoured a health insurance scheme covering some sections of the community, it did not approve of the system now proposed by the Government, and it saw; no reason for taxing every momtier of the community to pay for such a scheme, declared Dr R. Cashmere (chairman of the Hastings branch of the British Medical Association) at a meeting of the Hastings Rotary Club this afternoon.

Most doctors, he said, were against the proposed scheme, and many would leave the country rather than work under it, although they would get more money from it than they were now receiving. It was not any financial consideration which was influencing them. They were acting in the interests of the health of the country. tinder the Government scheme, Dr Cashmore said, doctors would become too busy to give individual patients the attention they deserved, and the elimination of competition would remove any incentive to study and undertake constant research. The Government was making a beginning by socialising doctors because they were the smallest body in the country and their votes counted for nothing.