Housing with Built-In Health

California has learned to its dismay how an influx of war workers can discombobulate the medical care of whole towns. The job of combobulating it again was undertaken last spring by the California Physicians' Service. By last week an answer seemed to have been found.

C.P.S. was organized in 1939 (TIME, May 22, 1939) to provide medical care for industrial groups at $2.50 per head per month, and given a nod of approval by the American Medical Association because a patient may pick his own doctor from the Service membership--4,500 physicians, 70% of the state's active medical men. Its first wartime project was to solve the health problem when a whole town moved in where no town was before.

Town Moves In. Such a town was the Linda Vista Housing Project, six miles out of San Diego--3,000 families moved in, not a doctor in the lot. Under contract with the Federal Public Housing Authority, C.P.S. last May began providing medical care for those families who subscribed. C.P.S. set up a medical plant on the project, employed doctors on salary, thus restricting a patient's freedom of choice in doctors and displeasing A.M.A. headquarters. Only about 500 families signed up and collections fell behind.

Rent & Doctors' Bills. Frustrated, yet believing it had a needed service to offer, C.P.S. hit on the idea of getting project managers to sell the service along with housing, collect the fees with the rent. FPHA approved the experiment.

Linda Vista is being changed over to the collect-with-rental plan. Since Sept. 1 a housing project at Marin City near Sausalito, Calif, has taken in 800 shipworkers' families (about half capacity) and 100% have signed up. Other housing projects have begun selling the service and 10,000 to 12,000 people are already cared for.

FPHA is so enthusiastic that in housing projects already occupied, Regional Director Langdon Post plans to adjust rents so that tenants may have the service for what they pay now or very little more.

Who Pays for What. Charges are $2.50 per month for a single person, $4 for a couple, $5 for a couple and children under 19. For this, subscribers receive full medical care, with few provisos. They get: preventive medicine, nursing and visiting-nurse service, hospitalization up to three weeks for any one illness or injury, up to three months for chronic illnesses, surgery and obstetrical service; consultations with specialists. To provide these services and to pay rent to the FPHA for office space and consultation rooms, for upkeep, clerical help, equipment and instruments, C.P.S. on a project like Marin City grosses perhaps $15,000 a month. Project doctors come from these sources: doctors ineligible for the draft, doctors returning to practice from retirement, women doctors, and aliens prevented from joining the armed forces.

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