The first Labour government (elected in 1935) wanted to give New Zealanders state-funded, universal access to health care. The plan was to pay doctors a fixed fee to cover all consultations. Almost all doctors, led by the British Medical Association, firmly opposed this scheme. This cartoon, published in 1939, refers to this conflict. The groom, representing the British Medical Association, is being forced down the aisle with his state medical-service bride by a gun-toting Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage. A compromise position was reached in 1941 whereby doctors were paid a fixed fee per consultation by the government and could charge their patient an additional fee on top of this – Savage's government was less successful than the cartoon predicted.