Veteran Care Flayed

A Congressional committee headed by Representative Joseph B. Shannon of Missouri is touring the country to register complaints of anyone whose profession or business the Government impedes by competition. Last week the committee was in Kansas City. To it hastened merchants, manufacturers, farmers, and Kansas City's foremost x-ray man--Dr. Edward Holman Skinner. Dr. Skinner, a War veteran, wants the Government to cease building hospitals to treat injured veterans. He wants only those veterans who were disabled by actual military servive to get free Government medical care. At present any ex-service man can get free treatment or hospitalization no matter what the origin of his ills. Under certain circumstances he can get free medical attention for his family.

Proponents of liberal Federal care for veterans argue that a wide open U. S. medical kit is sound social service by the Government, that it also is prudent business sense. The veterans carry Government insurance policies worth hundreds of millions. Every year the Government collects premiums on those policies. The longer the policyholders live or avoid incapacities, the more premiums the Government collects, the less expensive will be the final insurance payments.

It is also argued that the Government's medical service provides a salaried haven for doctors who under present conditions cannot make a living by private practice.

Aid to all veterans costs U. S. taxpayers nearly a billion dollars yearly, has cost since the War about six billions, will--it is figured--cost 21 1/2 billions by 1945.

"A gross and reprehensible practice" is this, complained Dr. Skinner to Representative Shannon. Three out of four men in Government hospitals are there for venereal diseases and other ailments not caused by their War labors. They cost the Government nearly half a billion dollars a year.

David A. Murphy, lawyer for Kansas City's St. Joseph's and St. Mary's hospitals, leaped at Mr. Shannon's other ear: "If the Government desires to make all ex-service men public charges, it should care for them in private hospitals instead of entering into an orgy of construction of veterans' hospitals. Idle beds in private hospitals numbered 119,340 in 1930. Of course, one of the causes for these idle beds is Federal competition."

Dr. Olin West, secretary of the American Medical Association, sent word that a movement is under way by Postal and other Civil Service employes to get free medical service at Government expense.

This was exactly the sort of complaint which the Shannon committee wanted & expected to get. Unexpected was the intrusion of two disabled veterans--Joe W. McQueen and Alexander D. Saper. The Disabled American Veterans (organized as such) have a thoroughgoing distrust of private hospitals which make contracts with the Government for the care of veterans. The men believe that veterans get less care and attention than do private patients. No matter what happens to men hospitalized for nonservice disabilities, for themselves Disabled American Veterans want Veterans Bureau hospitals.

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