Medicine: Backyard or Garage?

The notion of prepaid medical care by physicians practicing in groups has no stronger advocate than Shipbuilder Henry Kaiser. He has built the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan into a 475,000-member concern with 507 doctors and twelve hospitals (TIME, June 29, 1953). And for a long time the Kaiser plan had no more high-pressure booster than Author Paul (Microbe Hunters) de Kruif, the nation's best-known writer on medical subjects. Twelve years ago, no superlative was too sweeping for De Kruif's praise of scientific and efficient group practice as against individual care by the old-fashioned family doctor. The old...