^'^^■^''May^%2o:}    Present  Status  of  Health  Insurance.  331 
of  the  idea  have  to  face.  It  also  sounds  the  death-knell  of  the  hopes 
of  those  philanthropic  doctrinaires  who  really  think  they  are  doing 
something  for  the  benefit  of  the  human  race.  They  can't  effectively 
push  a  ''benefit"  down  the  throats  of  union  when  labor  itself  has  its 
mouth  closed  and  its  lips  locked. 
Nevertheless  people  who  are  in  favor  of  a  particular  panacea 
always  find  it  difficult  to  listen  to  reason.  Mr.  Gompers  in  the 
speech  to  which  we  have  already  referred  went  on  to  declare  that 
"no  matter  how  convincing  would  be  the  proof  that  compulsory 
health  insurance  is  impracticable  and  impossible,  there  would  still 
be  those  who  would  not  change  their  position  in  the  slightest  degree, 
but  who  would  still  want  it."  In  other  words,  they  are  not  open  to 
conviction.  The  doctrinaire  doesn't  want  to  be  convinced  and 
closes  his  mind  against  it.  The  self-seeker  doesn't  care  whether 
he  is  convinced  or  not:  he  is  of  the  same  opinion  still  for  reasons  of 
profit. 
COMPUIvSORY  HKAIvTH  INSURANCE)  FAIIvS  IN  ITS  PURPOSE 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  indeed,  the  only  excuse  for  compulsory 
health  insurance  is  that  it  would  reduce  the  total  amount  of  sick- 
ness on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  would  give  the  workman 
medical  attention  at  a  reduced  cost.  Experience  in  Europe  has 
abundantly  proved  that  compulsory  health  insurance  does  neither. 
As  a  committee  of  the  Medical  Society  of  the  State  of  New  York 
pointed  out  last  November: 
There  is  no  uncertainty  about  the  evidence  that  the  relative  morbidity  rate 
infant  mortality  rate  and  maternal  mortality  rate,  has  been  much  more  ma- 
terially reduced  in  the  United  States  during  the  past  twenty  years  than  it  has 
been  in  Germany  and  Austria,  where  compulsory  health  insurance  not  alone, 
but  the  whole  scheme,  including  invalidity  and  unemployment  insurance  and 
old  age  pensions,  have  been  in  force.  It  can,  therefore,  be  seen  that  compul- 
sory health  insurance  as  such  plays  a  very  small  part  in  the  reduction  of  length 
and  severity  of  illness,  and  that  on  the  whole  it  has  been  of  extremely  little 
value,  medically,  in  those  countries;  while  it  has  been  the  cause  of  a  profound 
deterioration  in  medical  service  and  medical  morale.  Even  in  England,  where 
it  has  been  in  operation  for  a  comparatively  short  time,  it  has  proved  so  de- 
fective and  ineffective  for  the  purposes  for  which  it  was  instituted  that  it  is  now 
proposed  to  inaugurate  the  plan  of  State  medicine  to  supplant  it. 
Compulsory  health  insurance  fails  not  merely  to  bring  the 
benefits  for  which  it  is  urged.  It  actually  results  in  detriment  to  the 
public  welfare.    It  is  plainly  prejudicial  to  the  public  interest,  and 
