"To Your Health"

"Many of our fellow Americans cannot afford to pay the costs of medical care when it is needed, and they are not protected by adequate health insurance," President Eisenhower told Congress in his health message early this month. The President used essentially the same words to summarize the nation's health problems last year, and he can safely reserve a place for them in his 1956 address. Even if Congress approves the Administration's health program, American's health deficiencies will scarcely be disturbed.

Today, the President points out, only 15 percent of the national medical bill is paid by voluntary health insurance, and only three percent of the population has the protection of full coverage. President Eisenhower would like to see health insurancies pay a larger part of the health bill, and he urges that all citizens purchase some insurance immediately. Insurance companies would reject no-one as a "poor risk" under the Administration medical bill. Fiscal hocus-pocus called "reinsurance" will enable them to sell policies even to the victims of cancer, diabetes, and polio-at stupendous rates, of course, because of the high risks involved.

Under President Eisenhower's "traditional American approach to medical insurance," (started in 1932) high premiums are dictated by the sanctity of actuarial laws. The high rates so established have forced too many Americans to gamble with their health. After twenty-three years of operation, health insurance pools have attained their crest and are now receding-today the percentage of health costs covered by insurance drops steadily. With the "traditional American approach" it is inevitable that children and adults will continue to develop chronic, incurable diseases, for many families with substandard incomes can afford neither doctor's bills nor the $150 premiums for adequate health insurance. It is time that America seek a new "tradition" in which every citizen has as much right to medical attention as he has to a free education.

Voice of Experience

Great Britain deserted an old tradition when it established National Health Insurance in 1948; today the heritage of health is respected by citizens and more doctors than would please the AMA. The British program of health insurance has not been completely successful, of course. Its shortcomings have provided bomb-shells for the AMA and should serve as lessons for more constructive planners.

The Ministry of Health was so anxious to offer a wide range of services, for example, that it offered free false teeth and eye glasses before Britain had enough dentists and ophthalmologists to supply them. Crowds of already legendary size collected in the offices of overworked physicians, and as they sat and fumed, they cursed the new health program. Compulsory health insurance would present similar problems in the United States, unless increased numbers of nurses, dentists, and doctors could meet the new demand. Even under the current voluntary health insurance program, the nation will be short 15,000 doctors by 1960; yet the Eisenhower health program-because of AMA insistence-will train only nurses, supplying none of the $50,000,000 needed each year to counteract the doctor shortage.

The social views of the American Medical Association are myopic, for if the nation had enough doctors, compulsory health insurance would not force the government to control physicians' rates. Without inflationary pressure disrupting the system, the fees under compulsory health insurance could be provided by paycheck deductions, employer contributions, and equalizing government subsides modeled on the Social Security plan. Existing voluntary health insurance companies could administer the funds collected, and pay physicians' fees with little of the red tape required under the British system. A bill incorporating similar provisions was introduced in Congress last year by Republican Senators Ives and Flanders, although it failed to win committee approval.

Properly administered, compulsory health insurance would give little inconvenience to patients or doctors. The only people who might be ruffled are those monetary cranks able to calculate the cost of relieving needless suffering and conclude "It's not worth the price."