The A.M.A. & the Aged

For the nation's growing army of oldsters, most of whom cannot afford health insurance, a plan was offered last week by the A.M.A.'s Council on Medical Service. Patterned after programs now available only in limited areas under local Blue Shield auspices, it would encourage a nationwide system of low-cost, prepaid voluntary health insurance for oldsters below a certain income level (not yet determined). To make the plan work, physicians must agree to accept lower-than-usual fees for their services to such patients. The all-powerful House of Delegates approved the plan unanimously, thus put the A.M.A. on record as urging its 176,000 members to get behind it.

Other briefs from the A.M.A.'s annual clinical meetings in Minneapolis last week:

P:As General Practitioner of the Year, who rates a gold medal, the delegates chose Dr. Lonnie Alfonso Coffin, 68, of Farmington, Iowa, who has been practicing there for 44 years, ten of them as the town's only physician, and eight of them since he had a heart attack. "I practice," said he, "seven days a week and whenever I'm needed."

P:A "remarkable new lung disease," for which no cause has been found, was described in an exhibit mounted by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Called pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (because protein-like particles are deposited in the lungs' alveoli, or air sacs), it has been found in 27 patients, all but one in the last three years. Sometimes heralded by fever, it is usually marked by labored breathing, a cough and chest pain, while in X rays the lungs look waterlogged. Nine patients have died, five have improved, the rest show no change.

P:Patients whose lives are threatened by bleeding ulcers and who may need massive blood transfusions can be saved by a chilling technique worked out by the University of Minnesota's Department of Surgery, reported its chief, Dr. Owen H. Wangensteen. The patient swallows a balloon through which a frigid (23DEG F.) solution of alcohol and water is circulated. The chilling cuts down blood flow, and also the secretion of gastric juices to a negligible level so that they can no longer digest the stomach wall at the ulcer site. In ten patients it has taken an average of 25 cold-stomach hours to stop the bleeding.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.