ONE of the foremost health tasks of the present day is to elevate the standards of public tax supported medical services for the needy and medically needy. Almost unnoticed, such programs have reached a size which gives them great social and fiscal importance. There are now some 5,500,000 persons on general relief and another 3,200,000 receiving old age assistance, aid to dependent children, and aid to the blind through federally aided programs. Probably at least $50,000,000 of federal, state, and local funds * were spent in 1939 for the general medical care of these needy persons-this sum being exclusive of all expenditures for hospitalization for tuberculosis and mental illness, and for public health services. Besides the re-