RURAL FAMILY EXPENDITURES FOR MEDICAL CARE.

Recent demands for more adequate medical care at lower costs have been nationwide in scope, but they have been especially marked among groups interested in the welfare of rural people. Surveys of the health situation in the U.S., made by such agencies as the Committee on Costs of Medical Care, the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Interdepartmental Committee to Coordinate Health and Welfare Activities, have repeatedly pointed to the greater number of unmet health needs among farm families, as contrasted with those of urban families. Farm families, in general, have been ignorant of, or apathetic toward, the benefits of good medical care. The lack of adequate medical facilities available to them, together with their inability to pay the costs of good medical care also have limited the amounts of medical service which rural people have received. The present study investigated not only the amount, kind, and cost of medical goods and services used by a group of rural families, but also certain factors which might be expected to affect these expenditures.