THE NOME NUGGET
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Entered as second class matter October 14. 1943. at the postoffice
at Nome, Alaska, under the Act of March 3. 1879.
Nome, Alaska. Monday. April 11, 1949
UNCLE SAM. M. D—“NOT FREE, NOT CHEAP”
(New York News)
The fight to ram a socialized medicine law through
Congress is spreading pretty much all over the lot.
A few doctors are opposing the American Medical As
sociation's plans to. battle against state medicine to the
last ditch. Some of the hotter Truman Administration
medical specialists—regreattably, we think—continue
to try to smear the American physician while contrib
uting few if any solid facts or figures to the argument.
As intelligent a retort as we’ve yet seen from the doc
tor’s side came the other evening in a speech delivered'
m New York by Dr. William B. Rawls, president of the
New York County Medical Society.
Dr. Rawls took as his main theme the proposition that
“government-controlled medicine, compulsory health
insurance, i. not free, is not cheap, but will cost the peo
ple more and will eventually bring financial ruin and
complete control of the medical profession by politicians
and will lead to sociabzabon in other fields.”
He produced a mass of facts and figures on which this
conclusion was based. We reproduce a few of these sta
tistics here.
At least nine countrie are now struggling with com
pulsory health insurance—among them Britain, Russia
and New Zealand. Dr. Rawls took New Zealand as the
nation where things should be as nearly ideal as possi
ble for the system to work.
In that big island down under, there are about 1,830,
000 people. New Zealand’s Social Security Act says that
“every person is entitled without cost to himself to such
medical attention (with certain exemptions) as is or-,
dinarily given by medical practitioners in the course of
general practice.”
There’s something phony about that phrase “without1
cost to himself. Otherwise, why does Ithe New Zea
land Social Security bill come to $104,000,000 a year, or
$68 per person? This money is taken from the people in
taxes.
In 1945 (latest figures available here), some 205,000
persons were admitted to New Zealand public and pri-1
vate hospitals. That is about 121 j', of the entire popu
lation.
If we should have the same experience as New Zea
land. under a state medicine system established here,
our hospials would have to take in almost 18,000.000 pa
tients a year, on 121 ^'. of our estimated population of
144,000,000. Average hospital stay of a U. S. patient is
28 days, at a cost which at present cannot be cut below
$10 a day and is usually more. That would mean at least
$5,000,000,000 a year in patients hospital expenses alone.
But we haven’t enough hospital beds to handle 18,
000,000 patients 28 days per year per patient. We’d need
approximately 190,000 more beds than we now have. To
set up one new hospital bed costs $23,000 on the aver
age. The new bed construction would come to almost
four and a half billion dollars.
Drugs, laboratory tests, administration costs, etc.,
would tack another three or four billions onto the year- j
ly socialized medicine bill. Altogether, he says, “there is
no possible way for us to get out for less than ten to fif
teen billion dollars every year.” I
To repeat, this money would not come from the air, or
the Surgeon General’s hat, or the wealthy fraction of
the population. The great bulk of it would come from
taxes levied on workers and employers—and probably
hiked up every other year or so as the original cost es
timates kept on proving too low.
But there is a further catch in the state-medicine peo
ple’s cries that Americans, God help them, are dying off
like flies for lack of adequate medical care.
The fact is that in 1947 (latest figures at hand) U. S.
hospitals took in 15,829,514 patients for a grand total of
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444,288,585 hospital days. That is only about two and a
quarter million short of the top figure of 18,000,0 )0 we
could expect under state medicine.
To fill this small gap, we’re being asked to change our
entire medical setup (enraging and or discouraging nu
merous doctors in the process), and take on a terrific
tax load to do it.
The truth is, on these figures, that our present and
time-tested medical machinery is catching up with the
actual needs of all Americans for medical care.
Up to now, we think ,the facts in this argument are
heavily on the side of Dr. Morris Fishbein and the nu
merous other “conservatives,” both medical and non
medical, who think Uncle Sam would be courting ca
lamity by grabbing himself a degree of M. D.
HOUSING AIDS FOR FARMERS?
Twenty-two Senators, half from each of the major
parties, have informally presented a housing bill which
calls for construction of 810,000 low-rent public housing
units by 1955, with the aid of $308,000,000 in Federal
contributions, $1,000,000,000 in loans and $500,000,000
in grants for slum-clearance, a housing research pro
gram and aid to farmers for building and repairs.
Senator Burnet R. Maybank, chairman of the Senate
Banking and Currency committee, which approved the
proposed measure hopes that the Senate “will forget
party politics and vote for public housing.” He consid
ers the measure reported a bipartisan housing bill for
the good of the poor people of this country.”
We have no objections to the general purpose of a
housing bill, although details of the present proposal
are not now available, or of a plan to eliminate the
slums in our great cities. Nevertheless, we are very
anxious that whatever assistance the Federal Govern
ment extends to the construction of housing be in a form
available to all the citizens of this country, including
the farmers of the nation.
STUDY OF MARXISM BRINGS ADVANCEMENT
(Associated Press Newsfeatures)
Polish army officers have been told they must be de
vout believers in Marxist-Leninist principles. Further
more, they have been ordered to use all “propaganda
devices” to sell that doctrine to all men under their
command.
Col. Leon Grosfeld, writing in the Polish army news
paper “Polska Zbrojna,” said:
“Our officers must come to realize that to work on
the broadening of his mental horizon, to definitely shape
his outlook upon life, that to study Marxism-Leninism
is not something remote from the army and having no
connection with it.
“He must realize that the better he has mastered
Marxism-Leninism, the more rapid will be his progress
along the path of military excellence, the better will he
perform his professional duties, the better will he serve
his country.”
internation'l News
At A Glance —
• Confined from Page One)
a democratic regime, the dead
locked Bonn assembly showed
signs today of getting together on
a constitution.
Officials in Washington ex
pressed hope that the new agree
ment, bringing the western na
tions into closer unity than ever
before, may improve chances for
an eventual settlement with Rus
sia on the Berlin deadlock.
The three-nation agreem e n t
would displace military with civil
ian control in the tri-zonal area,
but occupation troops would re
main.
In. Budapest, Hungary today re
jected American and Bri t i s h
charges that she has violated her
human rights treaty pledges, and
levelled counter charges of her
own.
The Hungarians asserted
notes handed to the American ai i
British legations that “there is
grave discrimination among cIt -
zons «»f the tin ted States and
Great Britain respectively, accord
ing to their race and color.”
China’s communists put pres
sure behind their peace demands
today by exploding an offensive
ugainst nationalist north-bank
bridgeheads along a 650-mile
Yangtze river front.
Monday, April 11, 1949
The fnal acts in the trials of
Germany’s war criminals
American judges unfolded tod gv
at Nuernberg—once the shrine
city of Nazism.
A U. S. court convicted five of
Hitler's top government officials
for helping him plan aggressive
war.
Not since the international mili
tary tribunal convicted Hermann
Goering and 18 other high nazis
'hr. years ago had any Overman
been found guilty on this charge.
The five convicted men were
the first of 21 nazi diplomats and
government officials on trial.
The verdicts will be the last in
a long series of American war
crimes trials begun in 1945. In
these trials, 1,539 persons have
been convicted and 44 4 senteuc l
to death.
Hundreds of others have been
convicted in trials conducted by
Britain, France, Russia and other
countries the nazis invaded.
Since the original trial of Goer
ing and the other major lieuten
ants of Hitler, 12 big trials have
been held at Nuernberg before
American courts. Verdicts have
been handed down in 11 of these.
The results:
Convicted 133; sentenced to
hang 24. life imprisonment 20,
lesser prison terms up to 2oi years
69. acquitted 33, and 10 freed be
cause their sentences already had
; been served while awaiting trial.
Meantime, the western allies
yesterday handed Dr. Konrad
Adenauer, president of the Ger
man parliamentary council, an oc
cupation statute—in effect an in
terim peace treaty—returning a
measure of self-government to the
forme’- riech. Th » reception was
cool.
Tiie parliamentary council is
charged with writing a constitu
tion for a German Republic com
t'o rd of the occupation zones of
the three western powers. The oc
cupation statute would become ef
fective as soon as this new Ger
man government is set up.
Adenauer and other German
leaders agreed to withhold com
ment on the treaty for 48 hours.
, The German press, however, lost