Health Insurance

Last week over 4,000 experts in public and industrial health met in Kansas City for the 67th convention of the American Public Health Association. High lights of the meeting: 1) unanimous support of the Roosevelt Administration's proposal to spend $850,000,000 annually on the health of U. S. citizens; 2) unanimous pledge of assistance to health insurance groups.

Although they deplored the antagonism of the American Medical Association toward compulsory health insurance, public health leaders made it clear that extension of State medicine should proceed gradually to avoid confusion.

Said Dr. Edward S. Godfrey Jr., Commissioner of Health of New York State, who was elected 1939 president to succeed Abel Wolman: ". . . I would prefer a demonstration at the outset on a smaller scale than a State as a unit."

Official acceptance by such a powerful health organization greatly strengthened the cause of the 110-odd small-scale health and hospital insurance groups which render services to more than 2,150,000 persons in the U. S. Harried by the hostile A. M. A., the small health groups have led a stormy existence.

Plotted by hard-pressed laymen and rebellious doctors, no two health-insurance schemes are exactly alike. Most prominent are:

Group Health Association, Inc. Last year William F. Penniman, deputy governor of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, who was dismayed at the Board's loss of several hundred thousand dollars annually through sickness of employes, encouraged 1,000 Board workers to join the Group Health Association. Inc. Starting with a $40,000 loan from the Board, G. H. A. established a clinic with laboratory and X-ray departments, hired a staff of physicians, offered government employes complete health service and 21-day hospitalization at rates of $2.20 a month for single persons, $3.30 a month for families of two or more.

Bitterly fought by the A. M. A. for nearly a year, G. H. A. doubled its membership, was declared acceptable by the District of Columbia Medical Society, A. M. A. subsidiary, after Assistant Attorney General Thurman Wesley Arnold began antitrust proceedings against the society three months ago.

California's Coffey Plan. Unopposed by the rebellious California State Medical Association, the carefully detailed scheme of burly, pugnacious, 70-year-old Walter Bernard Coffey,* was recently accepted by the San Francisco County Medical Society, modified to embrace 12,000 San Francisco municipal workers and their families.

Dr. Coffey's scheme is intended for the entire State, divides members into three groups: 1) voluntary employed members with incomes under $3,000 a year, who pay $2.50 per person per month (children $1) for medical and hospital care; 2) the "medically indigent": voluntary employed groups with incomes under $800 a year (for this group State or Federal relief money would pay 60% of the rates and doctors would receive 50% less money for their services than in the first group); 3) unemployed and relief groups, financed entirely by State, Federal or municipal aid, or by charity, with doctors receiving 75% less money than from the first group. Specific amounts paid to physicians would be determined by the total amount of money available.

Dr. Coffey is sure that even very low rates paid by the unemployed group would be profitable to physicians, most of whom now treat indigents for nothing.

* Originator, with Dr. John Davis Humber of San Francisco, of an unsuccessful cancer treatment which consisted of injections of adrenal cortex hormone.

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