The U.S. ‘health care’ system is a barbarous reflection of a barbarous society. Every person who has ever waited in a crowded clinic, denied the most basic sympathies, will recognize the state of affairs from a century ago. How far we have come!

‘Workers Mistreated at Long Island Hospital’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 5 No. 48. February 27, 1928.

Recently at a Long Island hospital, a child with a crushed foot turned away by a clerk because she had arrived a few minutes after clinic hours. At the same hospital on the same day a prospective mother was forced to wait several hours for treatment at the prenatal clinic. At a downtown hospital, near the East River waterfront, the seamen who are beaten without cause daily by the police are turned away and told to go Bellevue Hospital.

Workers Mistreated.

Nowhere are the workers and their families held in more contempt than in the clinics of the hospitals of New York City. When a worker seeks treatment in a dispensary, he is forced to undergo a long rigmarole of grilling questioning, most of it useless, and many of the questions are intended to embarrass him. In any non-municipal hospital clinic in this city, treatment is refused a worker if he cannot afford the fees, which are from 50 cents to a dollar, not including drugs and such treatment as X-Ray ($3 to $10), electrical baking or massage ($1 or $2), and pathological examinations ($2 and up).

Slight Reductions.

Some of the “charitable” hospitals grant slight reductions for clinical treatment to a worker after he has been investigated by the social service workers. Very few workers with self-respect feel comfortable while undergoing the ordeal of such questions as “What does each member of you family do?” or, “Can any one vouch for your inability to pay the regular fees?” or, “Are you absolutely sure you cannot pay the regular rates?” or “Can you get a reference from your employer?”

Waits For Hour.

If a worker is injured on the job and rushes to the dispensary of a non-municipal hospital for treatment, he is made to wait for an hour or so before he can even see the clerk. Then a whole barrage of questions are fired at the injured worker, who is, of course, in pain. Unless he has brought along with him an authorization from his employer or foreman or other such person, in which the company agrees to stand responsible for the fees for the treatment, he must wait another half hour or so until the clerk decides to telephone he worker’s employer to verify the fact that the worker has been injured on the job and that the worker in fact does really work for the company. Many times the employer will not admit the worker is in his employ, in order to avoid paying for the treatment. In this case the worker must either pay himself or remain untreated. Hospitals are supposed to give free dispensary treatment to the proletariat of the neighborhood. The treatment rendered free at any hospital is the most hasty, casual and careless which a callous and clumsy intern can give. Of course, a full-fledged doctor sometimes looks on, but that is all he does.

Specialized Clinics.

The hospitals maintain specialized clinics for each type of ailment, such as dental, eye and ear, nose and throat, prenatal, orthopedic and genito-urinary. A specialist in each line is supposed to be in charge of each. Each special clinic is open about two hours a day, two or three days a week.

The specialist supposed to be in charge usually arrives half an hour to an hour late. Meanwhile a mob of keenly suffering patients have been sitting or standing around for hours. At last the great man arrives, and alighting from his car struts into the clinic with his nose in the air. The specialist looks on approvingly while an intern does the actual work to the best of his not over-great ability. Usually less than half of the crowd of hopeful patients, who have been sitting around for hours, are taken care of by the time the clinic hours are over. The rest are told uncivilly to go away. If a worker is suffering from a bad case of hemmorhoids, he is told to come back “next Tuesday,” when the next proctology clinic is to be held.

Told to Come Later.

If a worker’s wife brings in a child whose throat feels like a fire, she is told to bring the child back when the next nose and throat clinic will be held. In the clinics of the hospitals of New York a worker’s overalls are a uniform of shame and a target for insult from clerk and doctor. The poor clothes of a worker’s wife are held in contempt. The respect with which a clinic patient is received by the clerks and the tone in which the patient is spoken to and the treatment that is given are all determined by the patient’s clothing. In any hospital a richly dressed person will rush in ahead of a long line of workers demanding instant treatment and by a little tipping here and there will get it.

The emergency surgery clinics are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. If a worker is injured at work outside these hours and comes to a hospital dispensary for treatment he is forced to wait as long as an hour before an intern will condescend to come down to the dispensary and treat him. At a downtown hospital near the waterfront it is almost impossible for a worker or member of his family to obtain treatment for an accident after 10 p.m. At other hospitals it is nearly as difficult.

Hack Doctors.

The specialized clinics, for instance the dental, are jokes. The worst hack dentists and students at dental colleges are in charge and to have a tooth pulled in a dental clinic is a risky thing. But a worker cannot often afford to pay the large fees demanded in a dentist’s office, and so must take what he is given in the clinic. It is the same in the eye and ear and nose and throat clinics. The treatment rendered a worker is cursory and careless. But the fees of specialists in these lines are from $5 a visit and up, more than a worker’s meager income permits. The treatment rendered the worker or his family at the pay hospitals is nowhere decent.

Treatment Unspeakable.

At the city hospital clinics, such as Bellevue, Governeur or Kings County, where no fees are charged and which are the last refuge of the worker, the dispensary treatment is unspeakable and often downright brutal. Thousands of workers and members of their families come here after being refused at the non-municipal hospitals and are quickly shoved thru the doctor’s hands with little or no relief. The round of personal questions barked at the patient is more embarrassing here than anywhere.

The discrimination and mistreatment suffered by workers at Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn, revealed recently, does not take place at that hospital alone. Kings County is no worse than Bellevue or any other city hospital or, for that matter, the non-municipal hospitals where payment is demanded.

Social Service Department.

Social service is one of the “charities” supported by the wealthy of New York as a salve to their consciences for their wholesale exploitation of the workers and as a sop to the workers. The ladies who hold lucrative jobs doing social service work are forever burrowing their noses into the squalid and miserable homes of the workers and all the rood accomplished by them is investigation, investigation and more investigation. They are the first to denounce any efforts of the workers to better themselves by mass action. They are the darlings of the liberals and the hirelings of the bosses. They content themselves with publishing reports and sending the children of the workers on an excursion to the country once a year.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1928/1928-ny/v05-n048-NY-feb-27-1928-DW-LOC.pdf