The Pittsburgh Press (March 13, 1946)
I DARE SAY —
Keep the doctor free!
By Florence Fisher Parry
I may be sticking my neck out, but I’ve never kicked at a doctor’s fee, or a surgeon’s or a dentist’s. Not at my own. There’ve been times when I’ve thought it was pretty steep, and I’ve said so, but I’ve paid it. I blamed myself for not having a clear understanding beforehand, especially as regards surgical or obstetrical fees, which are based upon the patient’s ability to pay.
Maybe I feel this way because of having spent so much of my time, during my formative years, with one who was indeed a very great surgeon, and whose fees, although steep, were few. Seventy-five percent of all the surgery he did was free. He worked himself to death, quite literally, in two fields: the one, surgery upon the poor; the other, in eloquent warning against the rising tide of Socialized Medicine.
I asked, the other day, a surgeon friend, approximately what percentage of surgery was done in our hospitals free of charge. He told me that up until four years ago, at least 50 percent; since then, the percentage had dropped to around 30 percent, due to the fact that more patients could afford to pay now due to wartime wages and full employment, and also because of increasing hospitalization insurance. Free medical attention remains about 50 percent.
It is well to remember this when you receive your bill from surgeon or doctor. Almost half of what you pay takes care of the poor patient who can pay nothing.
High coterie
This week in Pittsburgh there met in sectional meeting the American College of Surgeons from seven states adjacent to Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia. Seldom is met so impressive a coterie of great medical men. It drew local surgeons whose contribution to their profession is fast earning for Pittsburgh a reputation as one of the key medical centers in our country.
It would be impossible to look upon any of these meetings without being impressed by the high order of intelligence and character manifest in the professional records of these men. In the loftiest sense, they may be said to be the highest type of American citizen.
And not one among them espouses the trend toward socialized medicine which, if not Stopped, will soon impose upon us wholly politically controlled medicine and surgery. Governmental dictators in a bureaucratic administration will force conditions upon the people of America which, in every country where socialized medicine has been adopted, have been found to control if not destroy the free practice of medicine.
It is shocking that from our own President could issue flat denial that the compulsory health insurance program which he advocated a few months ago was socialized medicine.
What is a Federalized health insurance program if not socialized medicine?
The Medical Profession, fully realizing the dire results of such legislation, has done what it can to circumvent this threat to its honorable practice. Even lately it was quick to censure the proposal by a minority group of doctors, to raise the fees for medical attention – fees which, by the way, have remained the same since the last War.
The last outpost
Of course we all endorse a workable program for prepayment health service! Already 60 percent of the business of America is on an interstate basis of health insurance, and the policyholders of sterling health insurance plans are multiplying. Anyone may find protection, safe from the menace of socialized medicine, if only he takes the precaution of ascertaining whether or not his kind of policy is endorsed by The American Medical Association.
Would you trust your family doctor? Or would you turn from his proved integrity and take the word of shrewd politicians whose “reform” tactics draw directly from a desire to seize power by controlling the practice of medicine?
Are we by way of giving up even this last stronghold of individuality?