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The relative importance of the determinants of physician utilization was examined using data obtained from a community health survey of 2,168 households in five New York and Pennsylvania counties. Eighteen variables, including individual and organizational attributes, were selected to determine the causal ordering of these variables in predicting use of physicians' services. It was found that the need for care, average cost per visit, health insurance coverage, and age have strong direct effects on physician utilization. The other variables had either an indirect or a negligible influence. The path analysis employed in this study reveals the great potential contribution of sociological methods in health services research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with a strike ordered by the National Federation of Physicians' Unions in Belgium in 1964. The strike started because of the failure of the government and the medical corps to agree on reforms in the Belgian sickness insurance program requested by the union. The causes of the financial difficulties involved in the program include an increase in the number of beneficiaries and additional allowances for drugs and hospital care. Two events in 1961 have increased the tension between the medical corps and its adversaries. Then a number of Belgian doctors cooperated with the Federation to conduct the strike.

The article reports on the compulsory health insurance in California in 1934-1935. According to health surveys in the 1920s and 1930s, poverty and ill health were closely associated. There is an estimated forty percent of the American people who were not receiving adequate medical care as well as medical physicians who were experiencing financial difficulty. Adoption of health insurance was urged by other groups saying that without some method of spreading the risk of medical costs, the diagnostic and therapeutic value of modern medicine would remain beyond the reach of those who needed care the most.

The article focuses on the changing role of the social worker in medical education. The physician, even in private practice, is, in fact, part of a community's co-ordinated efforts to provide health and welfare services for its citizens. While the physician may carry on the essentials of the healing arts within the confines of his office, in most instances he is also involved with a multiplicity of other individuals and agencies, such as the hospital, health insurance companies, rehabilitation units, and, frequently, social agencies. Since this is so, medical education needs to incorporate a general knowledge of helping agencies and must teach methods of utilizing these community resources toward a co-ordinated treatment effort. It has been the author's experience that the assumption by the social worker of such an active teaching position leads to few problems in an adequately oriented department or division. Certainly the need for this assistance is quickly established in any medical environment caring for the chronically disabled.

The article focuses on the public health insurance in the U.S. This article is a study of the economic and social hazards of ill health and accidents and of the ways in which health insurance can lessen these hazards. This method of payment also operates on the insurance principle. Under this arrangement medical and hospital expenses would be paid from a government created insurance fund supported by employer-employee contributions through pay roll deductions. The Catholic Church's attitude toward the sick is best indicated by her practice. For almost two thousand years, the Church has founded and encouraged hospitals, institutions, and charitable agencies to aid the sick, infirm, lame, and blind. Religious communities dedicate their lives to serve the sick in the name of Christ. A health insurance program should provide all the basic medical and hospital needs. In the home there should he provision for medical care by a general practitioner and specialist, visiting nurse service, and ambulance service. In the doctor's office the patient should be allowed eye examinations, psychiatric advice, medical attention by general physicians and specialists, vaccinations, diagnostic and laboratory tests, periodic check-ups, physiotherapy, etc.