PAY OF MEDICAL MEN

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9568, 26 January 1917, Page 5

PAY OF MEDICAL MEN

To tlie Editor "N.Z. Times.” Sir,—l had thought that a short paragraph in the "Times” o£ Wednesday, January 2Uh, in winch . I was stated to have said “that medical men deserved no better remuneration than, any other worker who did his best for the community” was so detached and general in meaning that no intelligent reader could take any definite meaning out of it. Therefore, I did not consider it necessary to explain it. However, as I have been attacked by members of the medical profession here as having said seriously that no doctor should bo paid more than a working man, I feel, in justice to myself, and for the information of those who are interested. I ought to make an explanation which may save me from further attack. In talking, to your representative, about a State medical service, I said that as other Government servants are paid salaries to do their best for the community there was ! no reason to me why doctors should not be so paid too, and do their best for the community, instead of many of them, as at present, making unnecessarily large incomes. As at the same time I talked of the time when the State (meaning the collective voice of the people). shall control all industries and professions, it will be easily understood that one detached paragraph could not definitely express my thought and its meaning.—l am, „- TI7T „ F. WALLACE MACKENZIE. Wellington, January 25th, 1917.