STATE MEDICAL SERVICE

Southland Times, Issue 24596, 19 November 1941, Page 5

STATE MEDICAL SERVICE

AUSTRALIAN DOCTORS WARNED

EXAMPLE OF ARMY QUOTED

(Rec. 6.30 p.m.) SYDNEY, Nov. 18.

A national medical service is discussed in the current issue of The Medical Journal of Australia.

Dr R. D. Davey says: “To get a foretaste of medical socialism one has only to become a cog in the Governmentrun machine called the army and to watch the high degree of medical service dispensed on sick parades in our militia camps. As m the proposed Staterun service, here every man has the right to demand medical attention for every conceivable ailment, small or large, real or imaginary, honest or tendentious, and—-this is the essential point—at no immediate cost to himself.”

Dr Davey urges that the example of the New Zealand doctors in resisting a national medical service should be followed and that “it is the duty of us at home to see that those of our members who are fighting abroad for the democratic way of life do not come home to find that a system of medical fascism has been foisted upon them in their absence.”

The establishment of mobile X-ray units to examine school children is being considered by the Federal Minister of Health, Mi- E. J. Holloway. He said a larger scheme of X-ray examination to include adults would be introduced eventually. This would be part of a comprehensive plan for the nationalization of medical services.