BILL “INEVITABLE”

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21979, 25 March 1946, Page 2

BILL “INEVITABLE”

BRITISH HEALTH PLAN MEDICAL JOURNAL’S VIEW DOCTORS’ “CRUSADE” FAILS (9.30 a.m.) LONDON. March 24. The Lancet, referring to the National Health Bill says: “It is easy to be too much afraid. We should ask- ourselves whether, with all its risks, the contemplated service does not give us great opportunities. It is a great end —that whatever a person can benefit from medical knowledge and skill shall have it without hindrance. The means now proposed to that end may need modification, but they do not call for wholesale condemnation or irreconcilable opposition. The bill is not a Socialist doctrinaire. It is a proposal that seemed inevitable.”

Dr. Stephen Taylor, M.P.. who was director of the Ministry of Information’s wartime social survey, in an article ,in the Daily Herald, claims that the doctors’ “crusade” has already collapsed. “Even the British Medical Association can only quibble about details, though for months it has been preparing the medical profession to fight the socialisation of medicine to the last ditch there. The two reasons whv the campaign is fizzling out are, first, it is largely bluff and, secondly, Mr. Aneurin Bevan has met every reasonable objection which doctors raised.” ' j