WAS IT FREE?

 

HOSPITAL IN PREWAR HAGÅTÑA

We sometimes hear that the Chamorro people of Guam received free medical care from the Susana Hospital in Hagåtña, run by the Naval Government.

There were times that this was certainly the case. In 1900, for example, the second American Naval Governor of Guam, Seaton Schroeder, declared the Navy's hospital free-of-charge to the Chamorro people and encouraged them to go to the hospital when needed. Chamorros, at first, were reluctant to go. They saw the hospital as the place you went to die.

But then the record shows this general trend : certain health and hygiene treatments were free, such as giving worm shots to children; urgent medical care was often given for free to those unable to pay; but at other times Chamorro patients had to pay some nominal fee for room and board, as this 1925 newspaper article states.

And the hospital wasn't shy about taking patients to court to force them to pay when they didn't pay their IOU to the hospital, as this 1932 court case shows :

As the saying goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch.