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Nanny to Force Junior Doctors into Slavery?

"After seventy years of socialised medicine people continue to die on public hospital waiting lists," said Libertarianz Health Spokesman Richard McGrath today. "We are a Western country with a Soviet health system. Government intervention is not the solution, it's the problem - and calls by senior doctors for 'urgent government action' will only perpetuate the suffering and misery."

Dr McGrath, a Masterton general practitioner, was responding to calls from the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists for the state to wade in and force striking junior doctors back to work. "They would apparently be happy to make junior doctors slaves to the hospitals that employ them, to the patients they treat, and to the government," he said. "Ironically, the right of these doctors to strike is about to be entrenched by the same Labour-Alliance administration that Dr Powell is asking to resolve this dispute."

"Dr Powell and his salaried colleagues should realise that no-one can guarantee patients' safety if doctors are to be treated as slaves," McGrath points out. "His call to force them to work merely shows the moral bankruptcy of a state health system that treats its doctors as cattle, and taxpayers as milch cows. Rather than having Nanny State force anyone anywhere, it is high time both taxpayer and doctor were left unmolested, and the state health system was privatised."

ENDS

Richard McGrath Deputy Leader, Libertarianz Fax 06 377 3070 mongrel@winz.co.nz

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