Cheap Doctoring

"Soviet medicine has demonstrated that socialism works in the medical field, and that it works well. It is a system that is full of promise for the future--for a very near future."

Such was the epilogue which the foremost living historian of medicine, Professor Ernest Sigerist of Johns Hopkins University added to a book on Socialized Medicine in the Soviet Union* published last fortnight. But to the anxious minds of orthodox U. S. doctors, Historian Sigerist's dictum was prologue to a blood-curdling new excursion into the practice of medicine which the U. S. Government initiated last week.

As mentor of its citizens' health the Federal Government operates the U. S. Public Health Service (Treasury Department), the Children's Bureau (Department of Labor) and the Veterans' Administration. These Federal medical activities now warrant, doctors argue, a Secretary of Health in the President's Cabinet, with an M. D. always in office. Nearest thing to such a post is the Assistant Secretaryship of the Treasury in charge of Public Health, which Josephine Roche has just resigned (TIME, Nov. 8).

Despite this desire for authority, the American Medical Association, as the voice of 106,000 U. S. doctors, frequently protested against expansion of those Federal agencies, because they made encroachments into the private practice of medicine. But the A. M. A. has always in the end been obliged to hold its peace in the face of popular demand for more social services.

Last week's Federal excursion into Medicine was such, however, that orthodox private practitioners were outraged. For the benefit of 2,517 employes of the Federal Home Loan Bank board and affiliated agencies in Washington, that Federal institution financed a Group Health Association. This corporation hired a onetime executive of the Veterans' Administration, Dr. Henry Rolf Brown, and five other doctors, and last week started to give its members virtually every sort of medical, surgical, nursing and hospital care they might need.* Its fee (cash in advance) : $2.20 per month for unmarried persons, $3.30 for married couples.

Lobbyists of the A. M. A. cried: "Physicians who sell their services to an organization like Group Health Association for resale to patients are certain to lose professional status. The probable results on the medical profession of the successful operation in the District of Columbia of a single organization such as Group Health Association cannot be estimated."

Justifiably alarmed were the 2,000 doctors practicing in Washington. If the 116,000 civil employes of the Government there subscribe to the new organization, practitioners will lose a big slice of their business. The doctors hinted at ousting Dr. Brown and his five colleagues from the District medical society, closing Washington's non-Governmental hospitals to them.

The uproar resounded to Boston where Dr. Richard Clarke Cabot has taught thousands of Harvard students medicine and social ethics. Snatching up hat and coat he rushed down to Washington to exhort Dr. Brown's men to stand firm. This they did, and took care of 40 patients during their first day of business.

Another able Dr. Cabot. Surgeon Hugh Cabot of the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Richard's younger brother, last week had the A. M. A. by the ears with another proposal smacking of socialized medicine. Dr. Hugh Cabot has written to deans of medical schools and other physicians in key positions urging them to solve a problem whose answer the A. M. A. officially dodged at its national convention last June. The problem: How to get funds for medical schools and hospitals, how to get doctors' private bills paid (TIME, June 21). The remedy, according to Dr. Cabot & friends: Let the Government pay school and hospital deficits, provide medical care for the indigent. The A. M. A.'s Journal scolded: "Lamentable!" By last week 430 noted U. S. physicians and surgeons had plumped for this program, signed a nine-point manifesto embodying such reforms.

^Norton ($3.50). It is the first of French-born, Swiss-educated Dr. Sigerist's eleven books to be written in (not translated into) English. To gather his data he was obliged to learn Russian. -Not serviced are cases of alcoholism, drug addiction, brain tumors, madhouse maladies.

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