Medicine: For the Nation's Health

Ever since the first medicine men started to live high off the boar by ordering their patients to bring them the choicest cuts, ailing mankind has been worrying about how to pay the doctor. In the U.S. recently, attention has been concentrated on two rival methods (TIME, Feb. 20, 1950): compulsory national health insurance (favored by President Truman and Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing, "socialized medicine," to its opponents) and the present system of private payment to the doctor for each separate service he gives, with a limited exception for prepayment through voluntary insurance (favored by the A.M.A.).

Last week the U.S....

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