Doctors into Civil Servants

Financially speaking, it may soon be a simple matter to get a doctor in England. John Bull & family will stroll down to the "health center" in High Street, consult their own doctor, or dentist perhaps, among several practicing under one roof, pick up their neatly labeled prescriptions--and walk out without paying a single tuppence.

Such a rainbow's-end prospect was offered last week to Britons, who have long suffered from an inadequate health system. Health Minister Aneurin Bevan planked down before Parliament his long-expected National Health Service Bill, which promises care for every man, woman & child from womb to tomb--to start in 1948.

Further free benefits of the "socialized medicine" bill: 1) hospitalization; 2) dental care; 3) eye examinations and glasses; 4) operations. Not so free & easy will be the yearly burden of $608 million which will have to be absorbed by increased taxation. Estimated cost per Briton: $15 a year.

The new plan ruthlessly trampled some of British medicine's most hallowed traditions. Voluntary and public hospitals, local points of pride for years, will be bought by the state. Private medical practice, while not abolished, will not be encouraged, and patients engaging private doctors will have to pay twice, in effect--once to the Government in taxes, once to the physician. Medical practices may no longer be sold to other doctors, but will be bought by the Government, dealt out to applicants from needy areas. Doctors who join the system will earn a civil-service salary, plus additional small fees for each patient.

Although Britain's medical journal, The Lancet, approved the plan, the well-organized British Medical Association opposed it, reasserted their conviction that doctors should not be civil servants. Patient and doctor alike, declared the B.M.A., would suffer from the loss of professional freedom. Some commentators grimly pointed to the health plans adopted by Communist Russia, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany.

From Chicago the American Medical Association's Dr. Morris Fishbein added: "A nation which fought successfully against totalitarianism now proposes to enslave its medical profession . . . thus convert its physicians into clock-watching civil servants." If the bill passes, Dr. Fishbein prophesied direly: "The medical profession in Great Britain will lose the respect the rest of the world has always had for it, for it would be sure to result in deterioration of England's medical practice."

Doctors or no doctors, "Nye" Bevans' bill was almost certain to get approval from Parliament.

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