Horse and Buggy Cure

Currently engaged in the battle against government in medicine are a standing army of doctors, a sitting army of AMA lobbyists, and a mailing army. The postal brigade is the National Fund for Medical Education, which last week mailed appeals to 17,000 corporations for funds for the nation's medical schools.

The solicitors state the financial woes of our 79 medical schools very frankly: inflation has coated their balance sheets with red ink; it now costs $10,000 to turn a B.A. into an M.D., and lack of funds threatens not only to reduce the number of medical students from lower income groups, but to freeze our annual supply of doctors.

But the NFME combines this up to date diagnosis with a horse and buggy cure. Medical schools need forty million dollars. To stave off the dreaded day of government intervention, the National Fund has asked corporations to donate the sum in chunks of five million dollars a year.

So tax, the expected chunks have been but dribbles. The Fund garnered only one million, six hundred thousand last year, and it is extremely doubtful that corporations will wax more generous in the future. Corporations don't have even alumni interest in the medical schools. It would hardly be profitable for them to pay the entire and bill just to escape their share of the taxes when federal aid begins.

The NFME has two objections to federal aid: it would add to socialism and would destroy the academic freedom in medical schools. The Administration bill, which the President this year tried to revive after the AMA's sitting army snuffed it out last year, shows no grounds for these fears. There is a wide gap between government aid and government control. Under the bill, medical schools would receive a fixed sum for each student, to use as they see fit. The only hint of control is the Public Health Council, composed mostly of doctors, who would check each school every few years to make certain the money was not being squandered.

And though the NFME's concern for academic freedom is encouraging, it forgets that the money is administered by the Surgeon-General, and that loyalty checks are required neither for teachers, nor medical students, nor the corpses they dissect.

This, then, is the horrendous evil which the National Fund for Medical Education relies on corporation charity to prevent. It is no more socialistic than the National Science Foundation or the Fulbright Scholarship grants. The medical armies should cease both their stubborn resistance to federal grants and their stubborn search for a substitute before the shortage of doctors becomes more acute than it is now.