In October, the NYT reported that the government was making contingency plans for a draft of medical personnel.
The Selective Service has been updating its contingency plans for a draft of doctors, nurses and other health care workers in case of a national emergency that overwhelms the military’s medical corps.
In a confidential report this summer, a contractor hired by the agency described how such a draft might work, how to secure compliance and how to mold public opinion and communicate with health care professionals, whose lives could be disrupted…. [T]he report said, the Selective Service System should establish contacts in advance with medical societies, hospitals, schools of medicine and nursing, managed care organizations, rural health care providers and the editors of medical journals and trade publications.
Not surprisingly, medical professionals are getting a little worried about this. As the Wall Street Journal reported today, the American Medical Association is, shall we say, a little on edge.
The Selective Service System said it is reviewing a little-known contingency plan for drafting physicians, nurses and other health professionals, causing concern at the American Medical Association, which voted yesterday to communicate with the agency on the issue.
[…]
Yesterday, the AMA’s policy-setting body voted to accept recommendations from an internal report that urges the group to monitor the situation and work with the Selective Service to address such questions and concerns regarding implementation of the draft program.
“People are concerned that it might be a doctors’ draft,” said Sandra F. Olson, chairwoman of the council of medical education for the AMA.
Can’t say I blame them. As the Journal noted, a paper published this year in the Wisconsin Medical Journal, by Wisconsin Army National Guard State Surgeon Col. Roger A. Lalich, said that, though a general draft is not likely to occur, a physician draft is “the most likely conscription into the military in the near future.” A Selective Service newsletter last year expressed a similar view.
Good thing I never pursued that medical school track…