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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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medical departments naturally fought like tigers against having their claimants go into one of these clinics, where it would mean that they themselves wouldn't be needed in the central office of the company. So that different companies had different offices with regard to that.

Some of the insurance doctors were very good. Judson Miller who started one of the first clinics, was also quite fair and was an educated doctor. But there were some of them who were not and you felt very uneasy about their testimony. One of the things that horrified me and the place where I got this disposition to think ill of anything that makes records, particularly medical records, was what I saw of hospital and doctor's records during this period. I found hospital records just left around for the world to read - the insurance company, who was opposing the man, the State Department of Labor, the referee, me or anybody. We could read all the most intimate facts about this man's injury and case. This was also the same thing when applied to private doctors to whom he was sent by the insurance company. Apparently no private doctor remembers anything any more. He writes it all down on cards. It's all in his record. Somebody says to him, “Did you ever treat a man named John Jones?” He or his secretary looks it up and he says, “Yes, I did in 1945.”

“What did you treat him for?”





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