Hymns To Mammon

I was reared on apocryphal stories
of 1930s health care and welfare.
If those tales were merely half true
they were both appalling and unprovable.
The evidence was in the shortened lives
of the once living, now long dead. 

One story I took at face value
was to do with how free medicine
was issued by Charitable Hospital Boards.
These boards always had clergy on them.
The medicine was given if/when the patient
sang a hymn well enough for those listening.

What happened if the clergy were deaf?
if the patients, who were ill, sang poorly?
Protested from a position of weakness?
Or went mute from despair? I was never told.
I assume they did not get the medication. 

If such a board were to exist nowadays
it would highly secular, but still patients
would have to sing for their meds,
never knowing how loud their hymns
to Mammon were meant to be
until they shared the board's insanity.