INSURANCE HOSPITALS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9627, 20 October 1909, Page 3

INSURANCE HOSPITALS.

Sanatorium treatment for policy •helders suffering from consumption is thp Infest development in American insurance circles. Some months ago a fraternal insurance society, the Modern Woodmen of America, opened a sanatorium near Colorado Springs for the free treatment of members of .the society. A ranch of 1,300 acres was purchased, buildings erected, a watar supply laid on, and roads made, the establishment being under the control of a speciwlist in the open-air treatment Each of the million members jr the society is taxed ten cents a year for the maintenance of the sanatorium, and when the place was opened 650,000 members had paid up. The Metropolitan Insurance Company, one of the best concerns in the S'ates, has taken a similar step, but, unfortunately, the New York State Superintendent of Insurance,' obaying the strict letter cf the law regarding the holding cf land by insurance cornpanieF, has been obliged to veto a proposal to buy a treefc of land in the Ca f skill Mountains for a hospital The Superintendent thinkß the enlightened public opinion of the day may be relied upon to remove this bar. The company, in justification of its proposal, points out that cf 18,542 deaths among its policy holders in 1906, 18.3 per cent, were from tuberculosis., and of deaths at the age of 24, 4 per cent, were due to the same | cause Press comment on the pro-' (poal is enthusiastic. One paper points out that the stricken policyho'dexs woiligain in longer I'fe, and tie ompany in premiums paid through a longer period. "The public itself would ba tl e gain though the presence of another agency for fight-; mg tUDerculosis —an enemy of the human race against which all possible ' forces should J>e arrayed," it ?avs. "The proposed action by the insuranca company, besides the good tl.at would be dore to the individual sufferer, wauld cxer; a powerful moral influence, demonstrating in the first place the fact that a tuberculosis sanatorium is a good business pioposition, and moving the still hesitating forces cf government and philanthropy to take up the work at once and in earnest."