Medicine: Prepaid Doctoring

Health insurance plans were in the news again:

¶ The famed Permanente hospitals, which, at the shipbuilding peak, had over 75,000 Henry Kaiser workers as subscribers, have now begun to let the general public join up at the low war-worker rate (60¢ a person a week). More than half of the present 40,000 subscribers are now non-shipbuilders. The hospitals' 80 doctors, who have a good record for operations, are convinced that their best work has been in keeping people from getting very sick. A patient gets care when he begins to need it, rather than when he can no longer put it off.

¶ New Zealand's highly praised "free" medical system, which costs a subscriber 2½% of his pay, is in trouble. The plan has fostered the best hospitalization system in the world, but it has also fostered profiteering doctors. Allowed to charge for every patient they see, a few greedy doctors do literally that: charge as much for a glimpse as for a complete physical. Others rush patients through their offices at the rate of twelve an hour. Some New Zealand lawmakers are considering putting doctors on flat salaries. But some experts think they would do better to adopt Britain's successful method of "panel doctors": let each doctor charge an annual fee for each patient on his list.

¶ Medicine is so up-to-date in Kansas City that its citizens can now get hospitalization insurance for their dogs.