STATE MEDICINE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 60, 3 December 1937, Page 17

STATE MEDICINE

Opposition by American Doctors SOME OF THE DIFFICULT A sharp word of warning against " socialised" or "state" medicine in the United States came from a group of American physicians doing advanced medical study in Vienna, Austria. This newest statement of the problem whieh is being argued throughout .the United States was offered by the 'American physicians after reviewing the operation of socalised medical plans in a number of European couutries, particularly Austria. Writing in Ars Medici, a publication of the American Medical Association of Vienna, they said tho socialised medical plans, whieh offer complete medical and a dental service to everyone in return for a monthly fee, were generally unsatisfactory both to patients and physicians. The only-persons who benefit are politicians who administer the plans and tho heads of companies whieh handle the business, they said. Difflculties Clted. "A new element has been interposed between patient and physician, bureaucratism, whieh destroys the essential factor in the relationship — confldence," they reported. "The insured have the tendency to get as much as possible for the money they regularly pay. The sick fund creates unwillingness to work and the desire for recovery from illness is undermined by the possibility of getting money without working." Persons who are actually sick, in contrast with those who seek to be declared siclc by a physician in order to collect from the insuring company, soon become prejudiced against the plan and the physician, the report says. "The sick fund physician is ahvays in a hurry,' ' ac adds, -since some of them nave to handle 40 to 50 patients in two or three office hours and visit several dozen in the morning and evening." Bargain Prices Assailed. Bargain prices apparently are the rule, the American physicians added, since a recent schedule provides that physician specialists shall receive . 80 cents per consultation, 24 dollars for removing an appendix, 1 dollar for treating a dental root, and nothing for delivering a child. "Only pathological births are paid for/' and this "induces the physician at times to apply such means as forceps, only in order to get a fee," they« said. The results of several years of operation of thess plans it 'distress and discontent on the part of the insured and despair on the part of the physicians,' who have become the "Chinese coolies of the sick fund com« panies" with their reputations lost." The American physicians said that "to put the care of the sick under the direction of the state or national politicians and their medical puppets, would certainly not be advantageous to the patient or the doctor. If the American people could see what American doctors are seeing in Europe, they would certainly jom forces with those of the doctors to preve&t state medicine in America."