Economics of Living

New York City doctors last week ceased talking idly about the difficulties of keeping themselves and their patients alive in the local economic swamp, started the following reconstructive measures:

P: Proposed was a plan to charge poor people who are too proud to take charity doctoring $1 an office call, $2 a house visit. The standard rates now are $2 at the office, $3 at home. Specialists now charge $25 for a consultation in the office, $50 outside. They propose to charge the proud poor $5 and $10 respectively. If a doctor's clients are on relief, the city pays him $2 an office call.

P: Seventy-eight hospitals agreed to give annually three weeks' medical care in a semiprivate room to wage-earners who pay $10 a year to a new hospitalization organization called Associated Hospital Service. The same facilities now cost $49 a week. New York and 38 other U. S. cities copied this idea from Dallas, which in turn copied London.

P: The 700 midwives practicing in New York City last year took care of 5,000 confinements, earning an average of $40 a case. They thus deprived licensed doctors, who average $25 a delivery, of work and money. Last week Dr. Sigismund Schulz Goldwater, Commissioner of Hospitals, set about remedying that situation by ordering the Bellevue School for Midwives closed. That school was founded in 1911 to put midwifery on a scientific basis, has trained 731 midwives, has 21 in its present training class.

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