LEAD: The reply by R. S. McCord (''Some Suggestions for Better Health'') gave a grossly simplistic view of modern health care. The health care professionals he listed may not be able to help every patient 100 percent of the time, but then physicians can't either.
The reply by R. S. McCord (''Some Suggestions for Better Health'') gave a grossly simplistic view of modern health care. The health care professionals he listed may not be able to help every patient 100 percent of the time, but then physicians can't either.
Perhaps he is unaware of the services these people provide or maybe he has had an unsuccessful experience with one or several of them. Although he may not believe their services to be cost effective, the patients they have helped (including the truly ill) would take the opposite stand.
Send an alcoholic to his general practitioner and see what he has to offer him. And what do you suppose an M.D. would do for a patient with marital and family problems? I doubt that you could find an M.D. willing or able to go through all the channels and effort to find a nursing-home bed for a hospitalized patient.
What about the victims of automobile accidents? After their broken bones have been set will the physicians assist them in restoring strength and range of motion? After their severed spines are surgically stabilized, who will teach them how to function in a world that still caters to the able-bodied?
In this age of specialization, his naive solution is highly unrealistic. Even if physicians had the desire to learn the skills and to offer the services the so-called medical fringe provide, I doubt there would be enough physicians to fulfill the needs (especially for the same money the fringe does it for).
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