lots of Doctors in the House

The American Medical Association, which likes to boast that the U.S. has a bigger percentage of doctors than any country in the world (except burgeoning Israel), last week announced that its new directory will list 201,278 doctors in the continental U.S.--one for every 750 people, in an estimated population of 151 million.

Runner-up to the U.S.: Great Britain, with one doctor for 870 people, followed by Iceland (890), Denmark (950), Canada and New Zealand (970 each). About half of the U.S. doctors are absorbed by specialties (50,000), hospitals (27,000), government service (more than 12,000) and various sidelines, leaving a scant 100,000 general practitioners--about one for every 1,500 people. How this compares with the G.P. ratio in other countries, the A.M.A. could not say.

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