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4) Although socialized medicine would certainly limit a patient's free choice of a physician, few people today are free to choose their doctors. Dispensary patients, farmers, and even city dwellers, usually have to accept the doctor who is handy. But socialized medicine should have this advantage: doctors on salary would be more competent for they would have time and money for frequent periods of postgraduate training which are neglected by most physicians today. And those who are attached to a family doctor would always have the privilege of calling him at a price.
5) Socialized medicine would not spoil the personal relationship between patient and physician. "The fact that [a] doctor is a member of an organized group . . . does not spoil the relationship. What spoils it today is that the doctor has to charge a fee ... and the patient has to pay the bill. Once the money question is removed, the relationship between physician and patient becomes purely human. '
6) Socialized medicine need not lower the standards of medical care. "The quality of [medical] service given to most people today is," says Dr. Sigerist, "rather inferior, to put it mildly." Many patients cannot afford expensive examination and treatment, and most general practitioners have neither the special knowledge nor the equipment, to render such services in their offices. "Socialized medicine . . . endeavors to bridge the gap that exists today between individual and hospital practice by bringing the general practitioner into close contact with a health centre."
7) It will be serious if Government control brings politics into medicine. A recent shocking example: Philadelphia's ill-run municipal hospital for the insane at Byberry, which four months ago was placed under State control, is now being efficiently reorganized. But corruption and inefficiency do not need to occur in all Government activities. The old and able U. S. Public Health Service has never been touched by the breath of scandal, and many cities and States have honest health departments, free of politics. Dr. Sigerist argues that because the average citizen is more interested in his health than he is in highway construction, "political corruption in the medical field would not be tolerated; it would be opposed by public opinion in the strongest possible way."
Theory v. Practice. No one realizes better than Professor Sigerist that theory, no matter how well bolstered with facts and figures, must be tested by practice. Next week in his book-lined seminar room he will give assignments to 30 medical and graduate students for the first course in practical socialized medicine ever held in the U. S.
Each student will be given a Maryland county, told: 1) to investigate its economic groups, their incomes and occupations, health conditions and medical facilities; 2) to present an ideal plan for county medical organization that would emphasize prevention of disease and guarantee to every inhabitant the best possible medical care. In May the class will face the hard facts of how much it would cost to finance their plans. In this way Dr. Sigerist hopes to raise a generation of socialized medicine enthusiasts who will know what they are talking about.