Blunt Talk

A leading U.S. medico got off some unusually blunt talk last week on the high cost of medical care. Said Major General Paul R. Hawley, medical director of the Veterans Administration, to George Washington Medical School students:

"It is a fact that can no longer be denied nor evaded that medical care has become so expensive as to place it in the class of luxuries. . . .

"I am amazed to find how few [physicians] realize just how close we are to some form of socialization of medicine. They have been drugged into believing that bills before the Congress are merely the ideas of crackpots which have no chance of ever becoming law. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just as sure as we are here together today, if medicine does not offer a workable solution to this real problem, some plan will be forced upon the medical profession."

Dr. Hawley's prescription: socialization of diagnostic and laboratory services--the most expensive item in medical care--and adoption of more businesslike methods.

"The lowering of costs of medical care need not be made at the expense of the profession. But lower them we must, else we are all going to be working for the Government within a very short period."

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