The Cost of Medical Services – 1950s to Today

I was a young child in the 1950s, during which time we had a family doctor, a general practitioner by the name of Dr. Julius Westheimer (he had a German accent) whose office was an apartment on the bottom floor of a 3-story apartment building on Metropolitan Ave in Queens, NY. He had no nurse, no receptionist. And oh, BTW, he even signed my birth certificate.

Whenever we needed the doctor’s services for basic illnesses (like the flu, sore throat, etc.) our options were either to go to his office and the cost of the visit was $5.00 … or … he would drive to our house and the cost of that was $10.00. He’d have with him his little black bag of medical supplies, like thermometer, BP, syringes and associated injectable stuff, all of which were included in the basic charge. Sometimes he had a supply of the oral meds in his black bag to give us, other times, he’d have to write a prescription. We all survived. When is the last time you had a doctor who made house calls?

In those days, no medical insurance. But compare such out-of-pocket costs from the 1950s to the 2020s … I’d gladly go back to the way doctors and hospitals charged in those days.

The Cost of Medical Services – 1950s to Today

I was a young child in the 1950s, during which time we had a family doctor, a general practitioner by the name of Dr. Julius Westheimer (he had a German accent) whose office was an apartment on the bottom floor of a 3-story apartment building on Metropolitan Ave in Queens, NY. He had no nurse, no receptionist. And oh, BTW, he even signed my birth certificate.

Whenever we needed the doctor’s services for basic illnesses (like the flu, sore throat, etc.) our options were either to go to his office and the cost of the visit was $5.00 … or … he would drive to our house and the cost of that was $10.00. He’d have with him his little black bag of medical supplies, like thermometer, BP, syringes and associated injectable stuff, all of which were included in the basic charge. Sometimes he had a supply of the oral meds in his black bag to give us, other times, he’d have to write a prescription. We all survived. When is the last time you had a doctor who made house calls?

In those days, no medical insurance. But compare such out-of-pocket costs from the 1950s to the 2020s … I’d gladly go back to the way doctors and hospitals charged in those days.