STRIKE OF DOCTORS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 15 November 1913, Page 2

STRIKE OF DOCTORS.

. Striking of any kind is no joking matter, and yet something suggestive of tumor may now and then emerge from the fact that it is not confined exclusively to those citizens who are specifically spoken of as working men. For instance, from Berlin the other day there came news that the administrators of the German Workmen's Insurance Law akin to that which vexed the soul and , were threatened with a strike of doctors disturbed the slumbers of Mr Lloyd George in connection with his Insurance Against Unemployment Act. It is stated that the German medical men refuse to enter into an agreement with the sick relief authorities under the revised insurance scheme or to attend patients sent through relief boards, and they are protesting against the scale of payment and the . proposal that a patient under the scheme shall be free to choose his own doctor. Apparently the German doctors prefer conservative methods to those that are democratic, for the reform which comes into force this year allows the relations between the sick clubs and the Eiedical profession to be settled by mutual agreement, as the compulsory provisions contained in the original Bill did not meet with the approval of Parliament. It was expected that the strained relations between sick clubs and medical men would prevent an agreement between them being arrived at, and that the medical men would then attend the members cf the clubs as private patients, leaving it to them to recover from their club the fees paid to their medical advisers. To avoid such an undesirable state of affairs, the Secretary of State of the Interior intended to propose a scheme which, while leaving the disputed questions of the free choice system and of fees open to settlement by individual arrangement, would nevertheless provide that contracts between sick clubs and their medical officers should conform to certain rules. Hence, apparently, the trouble recently reported from Berlin, n