Halsted M. Stone, M.D., oral history interview, December 18, 1992

              DR. BROWN: This is an interview with Dr. Halsted M. Stone, of 
Chester, South


Carolina. He served as president of the State Medical 
Association in 1980 and 1981.


This interview is being conducted at the Omni Hotel on April 
23, 1993, by Dr. Laurie

Brown and Dr. Allen Brown (Cameyaman) during the 145th Annual 
Meeting of the South
Carolina Medical
I


Association. We can talk about anything you like. We are going 
to ask you some


specific questions and anything that you don't want to answer, 
please tell us. Plead the


fifth.


DR. BROWN: The first thing I am going to ask you about, of 
course, is where


you were born, your early childhood, who your parents were and 
anything you can tell


me about your family of origin.


DR. STONE: I was born in Chester, South Carolina to Scotch-Msh 
parents whose


family was the original founder of a Presbyterian church in 
Chester County in 1787. I


was one of the few doctors in town. Most of them were either 
lawyers, in the insurance


business or on some farm. We ran the last working plantation 
in Chester county.


DR. BROWN: Did you have any sisters and brothers?


DR. STONE: I have a twin brother. We are not identical and he 
is in the


insurance business in Chester.


DR. BROWN: Tell me a little about your early education, 
anything you can think


about: where you got your undergraduate education, any early 
influences in your life, you


can think of, and why you decided to become a physician.


DR. STONE: Coming up through high school, our old family 
doctor had always


been a real close friend of the family. He had a lot of 
influence. He was Dr. George

Henderson. I admired him very much. After I finished high 
school, I went to the
Citadel. That was not my choice of schools, but I really 
appreciate the fact now that my
parents were smart enough to realize that I was a little too 
wild to go to a regular school
and because of locking the gates at night, I did study and I 
was able to get into medical




school.


DR. BROWN: I guess that's why Tucker Weston is so proud of 
you.


DR. STONE: Then from the Citadel on to the Medical School in 
Charleston and


a year internship at the Medical College of Virginia in 
Richmond. I came back to


Chester to practice because I was going in the army very 
shortly, and did go in and


served in Korea. I came back to Chester to get my feet on the 
ground and I just sunk my


roots down and stayed.


DR. BROWN: Been there ever since?


DR. STONE: Yes, Sir.


DR. BROWN: Now, how did you decide to choose your particular 
field of


medicine?


DR. STONE: Well, I am in family practice and up until about 
five years ago, I


used to deliver babies. That was one of the most safisfying 
parts of it, was to take care


of basically the whole family. You would deliver them, see 
them on up through the


years. I guess I used to deliver about 200 babies a year. 
Then, when I finally decided


I was old enough that I didn't need to have the phone ringing 
all night, I stopped. But

I think some people are suited to doing one particular type of 
thing, but I did a little bit


more than doing just one thing. Not knowing what was coining in 
the door next was


always a lot to look forward to.


DR. BROWN: A lot to look forward to, I know.


DR. STONE: Yes, Sir.


DR. BROWN: I am sure it must really reward the practice when 
there is a bit. 


DR. STONE: It sure is because I am still practicing.


DR. BROWN: Yes sir. Now can you tell me a little bit about who- 
you married,


your family.


DR. STONE: I married Mary Jo Turner. She was from Spartanburg. 
She was


older, and while in a wedding in Chester I met her and-we 
became very smitten, so we


married. We have two children. The oldest one is Senior County 
Executive with the


State Development Board in Columbia and the youngest one has a 
family practice in


Chester.


DR. BROWN: What are their names?


DR. STONE: Alvin, Jr., and Sam.


DR. BROWN: Alvin, Jr. and Sam ... Alright. Do you remember how 
you first


became involved in organized medicine, medical societies, 
medical associations, etc.?


DR. STONE: I guess really when I was the youngest one at home 
they always


elected me to be the delegate to the State Association. So I 
would come down and sit


on the hard seats and go back and report. to them. I became 
really good friends with Dr.

Robert McDonald, in Rock Hill, who was the past state 
president, and at Dr. McDonald's


urging, I was elected counselor and then worked on up from 
counselor to chairman of the


Council, then to state president.


DR. BROWN: Before you became president, while you were a 
counselor, I know


it is hard to separate things, but what were some of the 
major issues we were facing back


at that time?


DR. STONE: Well, some of the same ones we face today. We were 
worried


about access to care; we were worried about the cost of 
medicine and the fact that


insurance was so high, and now it is even higher. We were 
beginning the PSRO and in


fact, the House of Delegates voted not to have the foundation 
and not to be involved in


PSRO, and by a very close vote on council we decided to go 
ahead and set it up anyway.


I think that was very farsighted at the time because if we 
hadn't done it then they would


have had somebody else do it, and this way we were able to 
control it. The other thing


that was coming up was Governor Riley's intent to put 
civilians (people who were not


in medicine) on all boards. So I spent a good part of my 
time, when I was chairman of


the council, working with Governor Riley to work out a way 
where he could nominate,


but let us elect the people from the districts to go on the 
Board of Medical Examiners,


provided we wouldn't say anything about putting a non-medical 
person on the board.


DR. BROWN: Right.


DR. STONE: There was some resistance to that, but we got it 
approved and it has


worked out very well over the years.


DR. BROWN: During your term as president wasn't there some 
change in the


type meetings that the state association held?


DR. STONE: Yes. I can remember going back to old Ocean Forest 
years ago


(we used to meet at Myrtle Beach). The House of Delegates came 
in and met one


afternoon and the next morning, and then the educational part 
started the next afternoon.


The House of Delegates [meeting] would be full, and by the 
time the House was finished,


there wouldn't be 30 people there for the educational part. So 
we decided that that really


was a waste; we split the House of Delegates up from the first 
day to the third day, and


then put an educational program in between. We could better 
serve the membership. We

worked very hard and very diligently on that. We also had it 
moved to Charleston
because we felt like that [city] would be a better drawing 
card, and we've been going to
Charleston every since. We were able to talk specialty 
societies into having meetings
with us, and we have raised the attendance from about 150 to 
about 400-500 doctors.




DR. BROWN: That's been a big improvement over the years, 
hasn't it?


DR. STONE: Yes, Sir. And the one thing that we wanted to do 
was to have it


so it would cost nothing to come. So it would cost the 
physician or doctor his time and


what it would cost him to be away from his practice, but we 
didn't want him to have to


pay any type of registration fee.


DR. BROWN: And that has been nice. That has been a drawing 
card over the


years, really. During your presidency, I think that, as I 
recall, your real theme was


"Membership is unity for strength." That still holds today, 
doesn't it?

DR. STONE: Yes, it certainly does because if we had everybody 
as a member,

one of the things that would happen is that we would go over 
to the House to testify on
a bill and they would say, particularly several people on the 
Medical Affairs Committee,
"But you don't represent all of the doctors in the state." So 
we had to tell that we
represented most of the practicing physicians in the state. 
We had gotten the statistics




down so that we could tell them we represented 70% of the 
practicing physicians, not


only salaried positions but the physicians who ran the 
practice. That was one of the


things they kept throwing up to us, and that was one of the 
reasons for this particular


theme.

DR. BROWN: I am still a little leery of saying that the 
number of physicians that


we have in the state who are not members of the Medical 
Association are people who are


in academic medicine or in training. There are a lot of 
people you would expect to be


[members].

DR. STONE: What they would throw out is the Medical Examiner 
who said that

we have a certain number of physicians licensed in this 
state. But there were a lot of
people who practiced elsewhere who had a South Carolina 
license and who also had a
license in the state where they practiced. But there was no 
way we could count them as
members. I think we still today have a very high percentage 
of physicians in more and
more academic positions that have joined. One of the things 
that we worked on while
I was president was to set up a committee to try to help 
physicians who were on salary
if they needed somebody to make their contracts better, their 
terms of office better, and

so on; and we did set up a committee like that. They were 
active in a couple of cases


where the physicians were sort of being,- . . . well, they 
weren't being paid what they


should have been paid for what they were doing.


DR. BROWN: Other issues that came up during your term as 
president were, for


one thing, national health insurance; [that] sort of went 
away temporarily.


DR. STONE: Yes. I think even back then they realized that 
paying for it was a


big part. There was no way that it could be .... Well, I 
think the other thing too, was


the way they switched from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan; 
that pretty well killed it.


It was going to cost them some money.


DR. BROWN: Now, I remember one of the President's Pages that 
you wrote was


about being a true physician. And you cited one of your 
friends, a past president of the


State Association. Would you care to mention him and what 
kind of life he had, and


what kind of influence he might have had?


DR. STONE: Now, that was Dr. R.L. Crawford, from Lancaster, 
and he was


another one who sort of took me under his wing and led me 
along. He was always


interested in trying to seek further education for himself 
and for others. He did a


tremendous amount for the town of Lancaster. He never had 
any children, yet he gave


some of the kids college educations without expecting 
anything back, in an effort to try


to help them out. It is difficult to find people today that 
were of the character that he was


and, quite personally, was always giving and never expecting.


DR. BROWN: Well, can you think about in your term as 
president whether there

is anything you would look back on and change, [or] what you 
might have done during


that time.


DR. STONE: Well, no, not a lot, I guess. Because things were 
in a process of


evolution. But the same things that were going on then go on 
now as far as tying to find


a way to get people health care. We would ask people to see 
at least one charity case


patient a day; and today they are doing the same thing in an 
effort to try to get people


seen. And, to try to get physicians to see Medicaid patients. 
This is something I would


run into. I used to treat them when I first started practice 
for whatever they could pay


me. It may be fifty cents, it may be nothing. But with the 
advent of Medicaid then they


were able to, instead of going to the drug store and asking 
for a dollars worth of high


blood pressure pills to last a month, go get the whole 
prescription filled. I think this has


contributed tremendously to the longevity of our population, 
particularly our poor


population who now live as well medically as others. But we 
would have tremendous


difficultly in referring patients to certain specialties 
because they wouldn't see Medicaid


[patients]. And yet, it was free cash. I was a little upset 
and would have a few words


to say to them.


DR. BROWN: Yes, I am sure. Another thing that I recall that 
you did was


visiting some industries. What was that all about?


DR. STONE: We were interested in trying to set up a 
physicians network, a type


of HMO or one of the prepaid type of things. We went out and 
talked to industry about


their problems with health insurance; particularly, getting 
physicians to see workman's

compensation claims, or do physical examinations for 
pre-employment, or [discuss] the


problems they were having with being able to insure the 
people. We were in the process


at that time of trying to set up a physicians network that 
would be available to these


people, and were thinking about getting into the 
self-insured type business. But, the


president after me didn't follow up on that, so it sort of 
died. But it was amazing that


they were just flattered that someone would come, out and 
try to find out about their


problems.


DR. BROWN: I am sure they were. Now, during those years, 
were there any


particular physicians or others that you would like to 
mention that were really helpful in


doing things. I know there were many, many people and I 
don't know whether you have


any specific people.


DR. STONE: I don't know. I think that we were a pretty close 
working and


pretty close knit group of physicians who were running the 
State Medical Association at


the time, and from Tucker Weston and Waitus Tanner and 
Harrison Peeples, we would


go to AMA and. . . we were accused of being a clique and I 
guess we were. We were


more interested than anybody else in what was happening. So 
I feel grateful to those who


were ahead of me and hope that we had some influence on the 
ones that followed.


DR. BROWN: I think that everybody appreciates things like 
that when they look


back at it. I am talking about being a clique. You have all 
these guys going up there,


... well, no one else is interested in going.


DR. STONE: Nobody else would go. It was time consuming and 
cost in time


away from the practice.


DR. BROWN: Now, about Governor Riley. You spoke to Governor 
Riley in


some way.


DR. STONE: Right. When Governor Riley came in, we sat down 
and wrote out


a basic health plan that we wanted to present to him and I 
was able to go over and meet


with the governor in his office and we had almost an hour's 
meeting going over the


health plan. Nothing really came of anything that we asked. I 
think it was because we


had supported his opponent. Until the last year he was in 
office and all of a sudden in


the governor's address to the legislature, there was 
everything we had asked for.


DR. BROWN: Maybe he just had to think about it for a long 
time.


DR. STONE: Well, it took three years. But it showed up.


DR. BROWN: That's right. It was during his term of governor 
that they allowed


two terms of governor. The governor held a second term, if he 
could be elected.


DR. STONE: He finally, I guess, saw the light and decided 
that he would go


ahead and support it.


DR. BROWN: Now, tell me what you think of the main issues 
facing medicine


today and where do you see medicine headed. That is an 
awfully difficult question right


at the moment.


DR. STONE: Well, I think there are certain things that go 
back to when my


cousin Bob Hemphill was in Congress and they were first 
starting to talk about Medicare


and Medicaid. He and I were talking and he said, "What do you 
think we ought to do?"

watch it come up. Now I unfortunately do not have much time to 
deal with it, so I grow


weeds as well as vegetables. I play golf and fish and also am 
still interested in the civic


things that happen in town.


DR. BROWN: Right. Is there anything else that you can think of 
that we haven't


covered that you might like to add?


DR. STONE: No, nothing in particular. Just that I have enjoyed 
the years that


I had in the State Medical Association. With the strain at 
times on the patients and on


the family and with all that was involved, they were all very, 
very kind, and the patients


were sitting there waiting when I got back. It has always been 
very nice.


DR. BROWN: Would you do it all over again?


DR. STONE: Yes, Sir.


DR. BROWN: Every minute?


DR. STONE: Right!


DR. BROWN: Well, Dr. Stone, I think that concludes our 
interview and I want


to thank you for this, and on my behalf and on behalf of the 
State Medical Association,


I think this is a good Project to put all of these things in 
the State Archives. I hope that


it will be successful. Thank you again. Thank you very much.


DR. STONE: Thank you. I appreciate it.