“A Greater Earnestness of Purpose and a More Militant Spirit”: Physicians and Medical Relief in 1930s Michigan

summary:

The Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1935 promised federal funds for medical relief, and Michigan physicians seized the opportunity to shape the local programs created under FERA. Michigan’s physicians sought to preserve the private medical marketplace through the allocation of public funds to provide medical relief, just as funds were appropriated for food, fuel, and housing. Michigan physicians’ efforts to influence these programs crossed into the professional terrain of relief workers and social work. Physicians were not able to navigate the system unchecked; local officials and relief workers sought limits to medical authority in the interest of protecting public funds, and physicians resisted such efforts. While many of the programs of the New Deal years were hailed as innovative models, most preserved the existing tenets of the medical system while expanding physicians’ market for patients to include relief recipients.