Soviet Wages

In the U. S. S. R. practically every doctor, dentist, druggist, hospital employe and medical supplies manufacturer works for Government wages. Dissatisfied with those wages, in outlying districts they have shirked to such an extent that the complaints of the nation's 160,000,000 inhabitants sounded above the Kremlin's walls. Last week Dictator Joseph Stalin decided that, to get proper work from doctors, dentists, et al., he must raise wages by about 60% and allow physicians all the privileges of engineers and industrial technicians. Last year U. S. S. R.'s health bill was $2,200,000,000. Next year it will be nearly $3,600,000,000.

For the past three years Soviet medical men and associates have been paid according to merit. The merit system will continue, and a doctor on a hospital staff will earn $300 to $525 monthly; heads of hospitals will receive up to $650. Village doctors will earn $300 to $350 per month, dentists $200 to $300, pharmacists $260 to $350, wages which in most cases are higher than the net earnings of most U. S. doctors, dentists and pharmacists.

Last week Soviet protagonists achieved a triumph of propaganda by inducing the president-elect of the American Medical Association, Professor James Somerville McLester of the University of Alabama to lead a large group of U. S. doctors on a 22-day tour of Soviet Russia next August Tourists are promised "visits to hospitals clinics, sanatoriums, theatres, art galleries, museums, meetings with the leader of the Medical World in Russia and else where, direct contact with the Russian system of Medical Practice, a glimpse of the Russian Industrialization and Collectivization, its methods and developments." Excuse for the junket: the 15th International Physiological Congress meeting in Leningrad and Moscow.

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