SOCIALIZED MEDICAL SERVICE

A national committee on the Costs of Medical Care yesterday submitted its report, after five years of investigation. A majority of the Committee suggested the socialization of medical attention for the people of the United States; meaning thereby a plan in which designated groups of persons pay certain fees (twenty to forty cents a week) to a central hospital, and for these fees receive all the medical attention and hospital care needed.

The report is interesting enough in itself. But of at least equal interest is the criticism directed against the report by the American Medical Association. Such stigmatizations as "Utopian," "revolutionary," contrary to good medical practice," are found in the objections advanced by this body.

Yet, is the plan of socialization of medical care so Utopian, so revolutionary? Surely anybody who has red over the details of the plan must be struck by the resemblance it bears to the present system of medical attention in vogue in our colleges. In fact, the plan is nothing more than Stillman Infirmary, grown up, and applied to society as a whole. Each grows out of the same basic facts, namely, that the physical condition of our people is of the utmost importance; that too often the individual in need of medical attention holds back in the face of the fees which medical care and hospitals entail; that these tremendous fees can be eliminated by everyone sharing some part of the total costs.

Harvard has recognized the individual students can not, by themselves, get what medical attention and hospital care they need, either because the fees are too formidable, or because the students lack the information for finding competent physicians. Today each student pays a small fee, and for this is entitled to a certain minimum of medical attention and hospital care, usually enough to cover all his needs. The report of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care does no more than recognize the application of these same principles to social groups elsewhere. If this plan has been working for over thirty years at Harvard, and is being used in the other universities of the country with such salutary results, it is difficult to see how this plan of Wilbur and his experts can be termed "Utopian," revolutionary," or "contrary to good medical practice."