Regular Meeting, April 14, 1954 2
The Blue Shield has a Professional Board, a number of the members of which are from Phoenix, and this Board, without consultation with the people who render medical services as distinguished from surgical services, decided that a type of policy that the public needs most was that which, starting on the third day of hospitalization, would offer a flat rate of $3.00 per day to any doctor rendering medical care, this to extend for thirty to sixty days. There would be a slight difference in premium to the subscriber, I believe 19 per month for the individual, 45 per month for a family. At the present time, since Blue Shield has been devoted to the more costly forms of care, most of which are dramatic or surgical, there has been no one interested in the medical phase. Those of us present objected to the plan. In the first place, we felt that this problem was important to us as physicians because Blue Shield is actually a physicians' insurance company. We felt that any fee that our Professional Board established as a set flat rate medical fee would, in the minds of people, more or less promptly educate them that such a fee represented a relative medical value. We felt that for our Professional Board doctors to say all our medical doctors are worth in the hospital is $3.00 was insulting. It is important, because other insurance plans or prepaid plans for medical care would take their cue from Blue Shield, and we feel that this question should be given an adequate hearing.
Secondly, we felt that we should enable people to purchase an insurance against the more costly forms of medical illness than they now have. We felt it was ridiculous to start a flat rate medical fee insurance on the second or third day of hospitalization, when their total bill on that basis might be less than $10.00. We felt it would be much more reasonable to have the medical fee pay for the longer illnesses--a plan which would start on the seventh or eight day of illness. This would cover the disasters which come to people, and, at the same time we felt it would prevent insurance abuses.
In addition, at the time we were invited to the meeting of the Professional Board to hear about this plan, the Board had already paid for the cost of actuarial study, and had established the fee I mentioned. Since the time of this meeting, we have interested the Society of Internal Medicine of Arizona in the problem, and that organization is actually making serious study of it. Not only do we want to oppose the proposal as it now stands, we want to offer them more facts. For that purpose we have invited Dr. Rosenow [ Rosen ] and Dr. Paul Hoaglund [ Hoagland ], who have made an extensive study of prepaid problems in California, to attend a meeting of the Society of Internal Medicine, and we are awaiting some decision at that meeting as to the type of constructive criticism or suggestion we would like to make. In the meantime, we would like to have everyone's support in opposing the plan for medical insurance that Blue Shield is all set to present to the House of Delegates as their Board of Directors, as it now stands."
The President declared this subject open for discussion.
Dr. Ludwig Lindberg spoke about his personal experience and dissatisfaction with the Blue Shield program as it now stands because of the provision that individuals must be hospitalized in order to receive benefits, when many of the procedures, such as the removal of a sebaceous cyst, could be performed in the office. He added that, as another example, it has previously been difficult to secure coverage from other insurance companies for radiation treatments, but feels that recently more recognition is being given to this type of treatment.
Dr. George Dixon pointed out that originally Blue Shield was designed to take care of people with a gross income of $3600.00, or less, in which case the physician's fee is limited, but that when the income exceeds
