Government Could Coerce Doctors

Northern Advocate, 3 April 1941, Page 4

Government Could Coerce Doctors

-NORDMEYER

[Special to u Northern Advocate” 1 CHRISTCHURCH, This Day.

The Minister for Health .(Mr Nordmeyer) -speaking at a public meeting at Kaiapoi, said: “Let there be no mistake about this —the Government can by.legislation adopt measures which would, in effect, coerce doctors into this scheme.”

He was dealing with the general practitioner scheme, and he said that if the Government and the people were patient the doctors would operate the scheme before long, without the Government having to use the force of law to compel them. Don’t Want 111-feeling

“If it is necessary the Government will not flinch from its duty,” ' Mr Ncrdmeyer said. “While we must exercise the greatest measure of patience in order that goodwill may be preserved, I personally hope that the medical profession will net make it necessary for the Government to do something which might bring ill-will and ill-feeling. “Even if it means the exercise of further patience it is better that the profession should come in voluntarily, as I firmly believe it will, than that it should be coerced into coming in.”

“Political Prejudice”

Both the Government and he anticipated that the doctors would oppose the scheme, Mr Nordmeyer added. They had no illusions. He thought it particularly unfortunate for medical men who would like to support the scheme, but .who did not care to fall out with their professional brethren, that men claiming to voice the sentiments of the profession were men so hostile to the Government on political grounds that nothing that the Government could propose would be acceptable.

“Merely political prejudice is the explanation of their antagonism and bitterness to the Government’s proposal, not any demerits or deficiencies in the Government’s scheme, the Minister added.

“If it were possible to have a free vote of the medical profession, or at any rate the general practitioners, who are the ones concerned, I believe, from my contacts with the profession, that the majority of the doctors would be in favour of the Government’s proposal.”