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Medical War. Although Dr. Shadid had been a member of the Beckman County Medical Society for more than 20 years, the society suddenly expelled him. Then the State Board of Medical Examiners tried to revoke his license for "steering" patients into his office. When this failed, according to Dr. Shadid, the Board imposed obstacles in the path of young doctors from other States who wanted Oklahoma licenses to work in the Elk City hospital. As a final, desperate measure, the State Medical Association tried to get a bill passed in the Oklahoma Legislature against medical cooperatives, but the Farmers' Union was too strong and the bill was defeated.
In face of this terrific pounding, Dr. Shadid's cooperative staggered. Only third-rate doctors could come to Elk City's hospital. Members dropped out, the Association could not even afford to pay the janitor. When an official of Great American Insurance Co. came to inspect the hospital concerning a loan, Dr. Shadid quickly filled the empty beds with his children and their friends.
But after the insurance company was reassured, and after the opposition bill failed to pass the Legislature, things began to pick up. Today the Elk City Community Hospital, enlarged by two wings, accommodates 85 patients. It has a staff of six competent physicians (including the only urologist in western Oklahoma) and a dentist. The doctors are paid from $5,000 to $8,000 a year, and the stockholders receive complete annual medical care at a rate of $25 a family. Only extras are for anesthetics, drugs, hospital stay ($2 a day). Every year the stockholders' delegates meet, elect a board of directors, agree on salaries for the coming year, re-elect Family-Doctor Shadid as chief of staff.
* A DOCTOR FOR THE PEOPLE—Vanguard ($2.50).