Medicine: Just Helping Out

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Many a U.S. citizen fumed and sputtered last week when he read that a Milwaukee doctor was hauling down $1,125 a day, and an Omaha colleague was making $450 a day, just for X-raying the chests of Arrfly recruits. The Army's explanation was disarmingly simple. For World War II the Army had been prepared: it got its own X-ray machines and did the job itself, except for a few spots where civilian radiologists had to be hired by the day. But after the war the Army had sold too many X-ray machines as surplus. Now, at many induction centers, it couldn't do the job until it got more machines.

Milwaukee's Dr. Irving Cowan and Omaha's Dr. Roy W. Fouts, said the Army, had kindly agreed to help out, taking the X rays and interpreting them for a fee of $5 per man. Dr. Cowan put his machine and two technicians (whom he paid $1.50 an hour) in the induction center, handled 4,500 cases in three weeks (for a total take of $22,500); Dr. Fouts got about 2,000 cases (and some $10,000). Both contracts would end when the Army got its own equipment and radiologists.

What the Army failed to explain was why only one doctor in each city was interested in such a profitable sideline. In Washington the Army's Surgeon General, Major General Raymond W. Bliss, was quick to announce that he would investigate the whole affair. Just to make sure, Georgia's Representative Carl Vinson, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, decided to turn a congressional X ray on the situation himself.