The minority report in its relation to public health and the medical profession / by Mrs Sidney Webb.

  • Webb, Beatrice, 1858-1943.
Date:
1910
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The minority report in its relation to public health and the medical profession / by Mrs Sidney Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    inquiry to exceed the statutory minimum, we should no longer find the resources of these medical charities drained and the sphere of the private practitioner curtailed by the resort to gratuitous medical treatment on the part of those who can afford to pay their own doctor’s fee. And yet no sickness would go untreated. Hence the total income of the medical profession, in fees and salaries, would be largely increased. I venture very seriously to press this point on those who are concerned for the private practitioner. The Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission proposes a great exten- sion of “ provident ” dispensaries, to be subsidised out of the rates, membership of which, whether by paupers or subscribers, is to entitle men, women, and children to the right to choose their own doctors, and to free institutional treatment—a proposal which I find one medical man has summed up as “ a public system, supported by public money, of free medical relief on a basis of contract practice.”* What the private practitioner should insist on is the maintenance, intact, of his monopoly of the practice of those who prefer a “ free choice of doctors.” Any suggestion that the State Medical Service, or any collective organisation, should be allowed to offer this attraction, should be instantly negatived. And, further, it should be insisted on that, whilst no one who needs the services of the public doctor should be turned away, there should be drawn a definite line of demarcation between those for whom the community will provide medical attendance without charge, and those from whom, if they take advantage of the State provision, the local authority will enforce repayment at such a rate as will encourage them to choose their own doctor. In the plan of charge and recovery by the Registrar of Public Assistance, the Minority Report furnishes for the first time an effective means of maintaining the safeguard of the private practitioner. The Relation of a Unified Public Health Service to National Character. In conclusion, I must again emphasise the urgency of this reform from the standpoint of the “ larger expediency ” of * “ The Poor Law Commissioners and the Medical Profession,” by a Medical Practitioner. (London : A. C. Fifield, 1909.)