Prepaid Care in Medicaid

To the Editor: We were disturbed by a recent report (April 21 issue) 1 that chronicled new Medicaid reimbursement programs aimed at "emphasizing the responsibility of the physician not only to render the service but to husband more carefully the limited resources as well." The dispassionate prose of the article does little to convey the enormous human toll that these proposals promise to exact from the poor and powerless. Few can argue with the proposition that excessive and unnecessary use of medical services should be curtailed. However, it is inappropriate that these attempts to limit the use of medical care apply . . .