Doctor's Bill

What they did was not done for profit or material success, for pleasure or power or selfishness. In fact, the whole effort made sense only as an attempt of people to pull together for someone else's child, on the principle of our common humanity.

Thus, echoing scores of editorials across the country, wrote New York Post Pundit Max Lerner last month when a gallant band of rescuers worked around the clock to pull seven-year-old Benny Hooper Jr. out of a well shaft at Manorville, L.I. (TIME, May 27). One of that gallant band was the Eastport volunteer fire department's physician. Dr. Joseph H. Kris. Called in by police, he stood by for almost 24 hours, supervising the piping of oxygen to the trapped boy.

For a week after the rescue. Dr. Kris --a former G.P. who now specializes in anesthesiology--visited Benny at Bayview Hospital until the boy recovered from a touch of pneumonia. He was photographed with Benny and widely praised for having saved the boy's life. Last week Dr. Kris, 58, rudely shocked the U.S., which tends to hero-worship its doctors, by sending Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Hooper Sr. a bill for professional services. The Hoopers make $5,460 a year, he as a highway department truck driver, she as a telephone operator. Amount of the bill: $1,500.

Matter of Ethics. Kent and Borghild Hooper, who had learned about the press and TV during their ordeal, called in reporters. In the resulting uproar, Kris explained: "The time I put in was eight full days and close to 100 hours. My time is worth $30 an hour. I've given the service. It was a personal sacrifice to me." Furthermore, he thought he was merely following the widespread medical practice of charging (within limits) what the traffic will bear: he had heard that the Hoopers had got a lot of money in donations. Not so, retorted the Hoopers; they had only got $2,400, had given $1,000 to the Manorville fire department, which played a big part in the rescue. Kris said he would not "crowd" the Hoopers, but eventually, if they refused to pay, he intended to turn the bill over to a collection agency.

In short order, the medical profession was defending its own ethics and condemning Kris. Said Illinois' Dr. Edwin S. Hamilton, chairman of the A.M.A.'s board of trustees: "Not one doctor in a thousand would have charged a fee. We strongly disagree with the action of the doctor."* Said the head of the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Paul Hawley: "A terrible thing."

Question of Principle. Connecticut's Republican Senator William A. Purtell went farther. Said he: "If this doctor must exact the last pound of flesh from the practice of his profession," citizens generally should raise a fund to pay the bill. "I am willing," added Purtell, "out of the outrage to my soul, to subscribe the first $50." But, said Dr. Kris, "it's not a question of money. It's a question of principle."

At week's end the mediation committee of Long Island's Suffolk County Medical Society announced after a three-hour session that because Dr. Kris had been under a "mistaken impression" regarding "the limits of the family's ability to pay," there would be no bill for the Hoopers. However, lest a dangerous precedent be set, the committee took pains to note: "Any doctor has the right to render a bill for his service."

*Says the A.M.A. Code of Ethics, as recently revised (TIME, June 17): "A physician may choose whom he will serve. In an emergency, however, he should render service to the best of his ability. Having undertaken the care of a patient, he may not neglect him." Regarding payment, the code says: "His fee should be commensurate with the services rendered and the patient's ability to pay."

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