State of the Nation's Health

To most people, the U.S. looked like a pretty healthy nation--until it got caught in the draft. Of over 14,000,000 men examined, only 2,000,000 were up to standard. Of the rest, 6,500,000 were accepted despite defects, 2,250,000 were remediable 4-Fs (of these 1,500,000 were made fit for duty), 3,500,000 were hopelessly unfit. In addition, 1,000,000 have been discharged for defects discovered or developed after induction.

These depressing data were reported last week by a Senate subcommittee on Wartime Health and Education after a two-year study of the state of the nation's health. The committee found that the draft-age young men were a fair sample of U.S. health generally. About one U.S. citizen in six has a chronic disease or physical impairment.

Servers and Services. The Senate committee, chairmaned by Florida's New-Dealing Pepper, proposed to do something to better the nation's health. As an immediate measure to help meet present critical manpower shortages, it urged that the Army Rehabilitation Program proceed at once to make the 750,000 remaining remediable 4-Fs fit for military duty. To improve the health of the nation as a whole, the committee offered a mild, sensible-sounding program to fill such lacks as these:

About 40% of U.S. counties lack full-time public-health service, about the same proportion have no registered hospital. Many registered hospitals are not up to snuff.*

P: Distribution of doctors is uneven (poor communities have only one-eighth as many as middle-class ones).

P:The U.S. has only 3,000 psychiatrists, not enough for treatment of mature mental cases, let alone preventive work among children.

P: "High-quality care on a charity or low-cost basis is available to the poor in relatively few places. Even in those places, low-income families are often reluctant to accept charity."

State and Nation. The committee proposed that the Federal Government take a hand in correcting these lacks--but a surprisingly small hand. Rejecting schemes for tax-supported medicine, voluntary insurance, or compulsory health insurance (as proposed in the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill--TIME, Dec. 11 1944), it suggested instead a system of Federal grants-in-aid to the states, for improving local health services. Objects: to build hospitals and health centers, organize health departments where none exist, provide sewage and water-supply systems, milk-pasteurization plants, scholarships and loans to medical and dental students, complete medical care for the needy (through extension of Social Security allotments).

One of the committee's best arguments for Government concern with the nation's health is the work of Federal, state and local public-health agencies in the past half-century. It is in large part due to them, declared the committee, that the U.S. death rate has been reduced from 17.2 to 10.8 per thousand during the last four decades.

*Registry means that a hospital is recognized by the American Medical Association but not necessarily approved for training interns. Registry requirements are not as exacting as those of the American College of Surgeons.

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