At a meeting of the recently formed Physicians Equity Association of America, Dr. Harold Hays, who is the moving spirit of that organization, told the following pointed story:
A doctor in Deposit, N. Y., was roused out of bed one night by the telephone. The voice at the other end asked him what he would charge for a call at the town of Walton, N. Y. The doctor thought a moment and fixed the price at six dollars. The other agreed and said he would be right over.
The doctor then dressed, brought his car out of the garage and drove the man to Walton. When they reached the main street, the stranger handed him six dollars and told him he could return to Deposit.
“But where’s the patient?” the amazed doctor inquired.
“There isn’t any,” his passenger smiled. “The taxi driver in Deposit wanted ten bucks to drive to Walton. I was sure a doctor would take me for less.”
NO STANDARD FEES
The anecdote was by way of illustration of the lack of all economic standards in the medical profession. At one end, famous, fashionable and occasionally overrated doctors receive fantastic fees. At the other end, doctors with less business acumen or less luck are content to get anything.
Dr. Hays is doing a major public service in calling attention to the difficulties of the medical fraternity. After long years of study and unpaid work in hospitals and contributions of time and talent to philanthropic causes, the doctor is left without effective protection against hard times, against governmental competition and against exploitation of his deficient sense of business.
Free, or nearly-free hospitals, health services by large corporations or by social service organizations certainly deserve public commendation. At the same time it must not be overlooked that such institutions take the bread out of the physician’s mouth. The upper strata of overpaid and pampered practitioners, in this as in other professions, are not affected. The lower lays of underpaid, overworked and chronically worried practitioners are hard hit.
ORGANIZATION ADVOCATED
Socialized medicine in which the physician would be guaranteed a decent minimum standard of living and be left free to work without economic worries—is one thing. The present in-between system, in which doctors are expected to practise privately while publicly-financed institutions make ever deeper inroads upon their private domain, is another.
It is the contention of Dr. Hays and those associated with him in the Equity organization that the problem of economic justice and economic safety for the medical man should be solved by the doctors themselves, through organization, precisely as other professions are trying to solve theirs.
They ask, in short, for the equivalents of a code and a New Deal for physicians.
Jewish doctors are so large a part of the medical profession, and so many of them are on the sheer brink of abject poverty, that the problem has its place in these columns. It is one that should interest the public as well. Adequate compensation for doctors in charitable or semi-charitable institutions is essential. In fact, some form of relief for doctors in economic distress, from all I hear, is essential.
A great deal is said about the doctor’s duties to the public. Much has been made of his heroism and devotion and pioneering courage. The reverse side of the medal, the public’s duty to the doctor, has been consistently ignored. The depression and its effects upon medical practice, however, are forcing a closer scrutiny of that side.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
