Charity Flayed

A secret vexation to many doctors is the free medical service they give. It is a thing they are squeamish about discussing in public. Only when one acquires a public position does he occasionally talk. Thus last week Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd, 46, Manhattan surgeon, made of his inauguration as president of the New York County Medical Society--important component of the American Medical Association--a megaphone for the old professional grievance.

Annual free medical attendance in the U. S., he estimated, amounts to $365,000,000. Doctors need the money, for fewer than one out of five of them ever save enough money to compensate for their education cost ($28,000 average).

To reduce medical charity, President Heyd expressed four thoughts:

1) A slap at the general public: "The outlay for cosmetics, cigarets, chewing gum, are expenditures that are in no sense necessities and are distinctly in the luxury class. These luxury expenditures total over five and a half times the total cost of all non-government health services. The amount spent for tobacco alone is three times as much as that spent for physicians and the American people spend more for candy than they do for doctors."

2) An insurance recommendation: "We must come to some scheme whereby the cost of the professional attention, or even the hospital, might be spread over a sufficient number of months to enable the patient to liquidate his indebtedness and be a self-respecting, responsible member of the community."

3) An insistence: "No free clinic should be permitted to operate without reimbursing the attending physicians for their time."

4) A promise: "If the doctor could be assured of, let us say, a minimal revenue from all the patients that he takes care of, he could well afford to permit a reduction on some percentage of his work."

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