Cooperative Doctor

In the U. S. today are about 110 voluntary health-insurance groups, which render services to some 2,150,000 members at a low annual rate. Most of those providing complete medical care are privately owned clinics established by doctors, such as the highly successful Ross-Loos Clinic in Los Angeles. Rapidly growing, however, are cooperative clinics, established and owned by laymen who pay, in addition to initial stock investments, a small annual sum for medical care. Most conspicuous of the cooperatives is the Group Health Association in Washington, D. C., at whose behest the Government is now prosecuting an antitrust action against the American Medical Association. Most successful is the Community Hospital in Elk City, Okla., a clinic which serves 15,000 farmers throughout the southwestern part of the State.

First cooperative hospital ever set up in the U. S., Community Hospital owes its existence to a swarthy, fiery little Syrian, Dr. Michael Abraham Shadid. Dr. Shadid is recognized as a powerful, if retiring, figure among radical U. S. medical men. This week Dr. Shadid, now 57, published his autobiography.*

Beirut to Elk City. Michael Shadid was born in a little stone hut on the olive-clad slopes of Mount Lebanon in Syria. He worked his way through the village school, later through the American University's high school in Beirut. Then young Michael went in steerage to New York, started peddling cheap jewelry. Within a few years he had saved $5,000, had combed almost every State east of the Rockies. But he wanted to be a doctor, so he tossed out his trinkets, went to medical school at Washington University in St. Louis. He graduated, finally settled in Elk City, Okla. (population: 5,660), married the girl to whom he had been betrothed in Syria on the day she was born, raised a family of six children, boosted his income to $20,000 a year.

Infectious Idea. In 1928, popular, respected Dr. Shadid was dissatisfied. He was "bitten by some filtrable virus and turned into a reformer." The farmers of southwestern Oklahoma had no hospital they could afford to use. They paid exorbitant prices for medical care, were often cheated by unscrupulous doctors. Casting about for a solution, Dr. Shadid finally realized that the farmers would have to build their own hospital.

After a year's study, Dr. Shadid called a meeting of his farmer patients, asked them to subscribe $50 each for stock in an association which would build a clinic and hospital in Elk City. Said he: "In western Oklahoma we do not have a single specialist in urology. We do not have a brain specialist, child specialist, orthopedic specialist. . . . Two thousand of you can pay $25 a year for your families, and with the $50,000 you will have collectively, you can hire eight or more good doctors and specialists who will provide you with free examinations, free treatments, and free surgical operations. . . . You can have expensive equipment, preventive medical treatment. . . ."

The powerful Oklahoma Farmers' Union backed the plan, and in August 1931 the Community Health Association, Inc. formally opened a trim, two-story brick hospital.

Medical War. Although Dr. Shadid had been a member of the Beckman County Medical Society for more than 20 years, the society suddenly expelled him. Then the State Board of Medical Examiners tried to revoke his license for "steering" patients into his office. When this failed, according to Dr. Shadid, the Board imposed obstacles in the path of young doctors from other States who wanted Oklahoma licenses to work in the Elk City hospital. As a final, desperate measure, the State Medical Association tried to get a bill passed in the Oklahoma Legislature against medical cooperatives, but the Farmers' Union was too strong and the bill was defeated.

In face of this terrific pounding, Dr. Shadid's cooperative staggered. Only third-rate doctors could come to Elk City's hospital. Members dropped out, the Association could not even afford to pay the janitor. When an official of Great American Insurance Co. came to inspect the hospital concerning a loan, Dr. Shadid quickly filled the empty beds with his children and their friends.

But after the insurance company was reassured, and after the opposition bill failed to pass the Legislature, things began to pick up. Today the Elk City Community Hospital, enlarged by two wings, accommodates 85 patients. It has a staff of six competent physicians (including the only urologist in western Oklahoma) and a dentist. The doctors are paid from $5,000 to $8,000 a year, and the stockholders receive complete annual medical care at a rate of $25 a family. Only extras are for anesthetics, drugs, hospital stay ($2 a day). Every year the stockholders' delegates meet, elect a board of directors, agree on salaries for the coming year, re-elect Family-Doctor Shadid as chief of staff.

* A DOCTOR FOR THE PEOPLE--Vanguard ($2.50).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.