Medicine: Yardstick for Fees

Many a patient nearly has a relapse when he gets his doctor’s bill. The Los Angeles County Medical Association recently worked out a yardstick of fees for doctors’ services, to be applied only to patients making less than $6,000 a year.

The association sent the yardstick to its members, asked them to vote on its adoption. Some suggested fees:

¶ Initial office visit: $12.50, or $7.50 for a minor complaint. Subsequent visits, $5.

¶ Obstetrical delivery with no complications: $175.

¶ Appendectomy: $175

¶ Electrocardiogram: $15.

¶ Gallstone operation: $250.

¶ Tonsillectomy: $75.

¶ Broken wrist: $75.

Most of the fees were below what Los Angeles doctors usually charge. Example: for obstetrical deliveries, many doctors now average a family’s income for three years, charge five or six weeks’ salary.

Last week the Los Angeles doctors’ diagnosis was in: they flatly rejected the yardstick by failing to give it a required two-thirds majority vote. But the association still hoped that it would help to level fees.

Said one doctor: “I’m certainly going to keep the yardstick in my office.”