Let's say it the way it really is: the facilities, services, and numbers of personnel available for the health care of the people of the urban ghettos are as disadvantaged as the patients who seek the medical help. Ghetto patients get ghetto-style medicine—and now that it has become axiomatic in all sectors of America that effective health care is a right, tacit acceptance of ghettostyle medicine is no longer conscionable. How are we going to change the situation? Will the deflationary postures of federal, state, and municipal governments merely lead to rhetoric without revision?
Recently, in New York city, the Society of Urban Physicians, under the chairmanship of Seymour M. Glick, MD, and Gerald E. Thomson, MD, conducted a conference entitled "Municipal and County Hospitals in Search of Quality Care." It was modestly attended, received some notice in the New York press, and reviewed lessons about medicine in the