Board of Directors Meeting, April 8, 1954 11
Hospital and override the recommendations of the Governing Board at the County Hospital. They are pretty [ crossed out: so ] firmly convinced they want Cohen to do this job.
Dr. Kuhlman--What is his contract?
Dr. Bean--Only to serve at the Hospital.
Dr. Kuhlman--He could refuses it, then.
Dr. Kent--It brings up the point that he is overage and they can retire him.
Dr. Bean--In order to continue as a County employee and participate in the retirement plan, we have to write a letter requesting he continue every two years. We tried to get a ruling on that, but it is pretty hazy.
Dr. Lesemann--How much work would it be?
Dr. Bean--I tried to find out today, and the two coroners differ a bit. But they say there are about 5 murders, 40 highway accidents a year, which he would have to cover. The other coroner wants him to come out to the scene of the job, and the other is willing for him to see the corpse in the Hospital.
Dr. Bernstein--What happens if Cohen, under those circumstances, refuses?
Dr. Bean--They might can him. The question is whether the Governing Board of the Hospital wants to let the Supervisors override our recommendation. I do not see that the County Society can do anything because they have gone at least so far as to recognize that they want a member of the County Society to do it.
Dr. Hayden--They had quite a time getting a good pathologist--there are not too many You are not going to get one out there for less then $18,000 or $20,000 a year, and if they would raise the salary to $15,000 they still would not get anybody out there.
Dr. Bernstein--Suppose we also find that the quality of his duties interfered with so that he cannot serve the County Hospital efficiently? We could then bring this pressure to bear.
Dr. Beaton--Is the Governing Board our representative out there? It is up to them to handle it.
Dr. Kent--We will handle at the next meeting.
Dr. Steen--I talked to Titche, and the invitation and some of the men out there, and the women do not know what they are going to do with their Auxiliary.
Dr. Bernstein--I feel that this is another time for us to get together and have dinner together for a meeting, but this women's business makes it almost impossible.
Dr. Engel--This is the last meeting of the Board of Directors which those of us who are Delegates will have before the State Meeting. Each year we have taken more time to discuss. One thing I am interested in is Blue-Shield, because you know Blue Shield wants to enter into insurance of medical illness as well as surgical.
They had already made their plan and presented it to us for an o.k. My view was that it was horrible. Provision was that in a case of medical illness, that starting the third day of hospital admission the physician should be paid $3.00 a day for a period of 30 days. I had several objections to that, and since that time we have had a local meeting of the Tucson Chapter of the Arizona Society of Internal Medicine and our general view here is that this is a Doctor's insurance company and where doctors place a relative value upon fees from people who make less that $3600.00 a year, and that such flat statement of the value of any and all medical service has an exceedingly bad effect on the view point of those people who are intelligent, that they or other [ crossed out: company ] insurance companies might say--"Well, what is it worth?" "Oh, about $3.00 a day."
The second thing, our criticism was that if they enter the medical service field it should provide what Blue Shield was to provide in the first place, an insurance when a catastrophe occurs. Certainly it should not begin until after the 7th day--there is hardly anybody who cannot afford $18.00 or $20.00 for medical service--but we would be avoiding some of the stigmata that goes along with setting a low daily rate for medical care and would also be avoiding some of the easily anticipated abuses of the plan where somebody is in for 2 days and because he is eligible for a lot of work which he may not have needed. So, our own group, after hashing it back and forth, thought 7 days exemption and a $5.00 daily rate, if they insist on having it on a daily rate basis. Since that time the Phoenix group have invited Paul Hoagland and Rosen to discuss it with us and Dr. Rosen
