[HSF] Paper Journals in an Internet age.

[Rwmfglycar at aol.com]

These discussions on fees and money and who looks after the poor are as  
always interesting. 
My father, a surgeon, died in 1950. I helped my mother go through his  
account books. I realised after a while that 25% of his patients had not paid  him. 
I asked my doctor mother why this was so and she said "Those are the  patients 
who could not afford the surgery. The others gave us a comfortable  living." 
These were patients in his private practice. He also saw patients in a  
government charity hospital and was very upset when the government  announced they 
were going to start paying the "voluntary" doctors for their  sessions; he 
thought that was the beginning of the end of his independence. 
In the course of going through his papers I came across a letter from an  
anesthesiologist complaining that my Dad was using his services too frequently  
for the nonpay patients!
Bob