69 years ago, a president pitches his idea for national health care

[Shrek]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/november-19-1945-harry-truman-calls-national-health-insurance-program/

Back in 1945 — a mere seven months into a presidency he inherited from Franklin D. Roosevelt — Truman proposed a “universal” national health insurance program. In his remarks to Congress, he declared, “Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. The time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and that protection.”

[Scuba]

1. Remind me why we quit fighting for this.

[PatrickforO]

6. Years of massive corporate propaganda and manufactured consent...

Masterful in its content, the majority of our people have been brainwashed to vote against their own best interest.

[Octafish]

2. Whatever happened to that Universal health protection thing?

In the Congress of 1945?

I do know what happened in 1961. Ronald Reagan called President Kennedy a SOCIALIST for proposing universal health care.



Operation COFFEECUP - How Reagan Worked to Stop Universal Health Coverage in 1961

In December 1961, the AMA pulled out all the stops to prevent President John F. Kennedy from proposing universal health coverage. For their effort, they recruited a TV-personality.

Write those letters now. Call your friends, and tell them to write them. If you don't, this program I promise you will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until, one day . . . we will awake to find that we have so­cialism. And if you don't do this, and if I don't do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free.

Sounds familiar to Tea Party crapola of today. Ironic: Corporate McPravda avoids mentioning how one has-been B-movie actor took part in the organized opposition to Medicare in the early 1960s. Here's the story, thanks to Mr. Scott E. Starr:

The Campaign Against Medicare

Monday, March 22, 2010
By Scott E. Starr

EXCERPT...

In order to maintain the illusion of spontaneity, the AMA did not announce the existence of Operation Coffeecup or publicize the Reagan recording. The record was to be used, campaign organizers cautioned, only in the groups meeting under the controlled conditions of the informal coffees. Under no circumstances, recipients of the record were warned, were they to permit commercial broadcast of the recording.

Operation Coffeecup was kept deliberately low-key and internal to the AMA, its Woman’s Auxiliary, and the trusted friends and neighbors of the Auxiliary women. Reagan’s efforts against Medicare were revealed, however, in a scoop by Drew Pearson in his Washington Merry-Go-Round column of June 17th. Pearson titled his item on Reagan, “Star vs. JFK,” and he told his readers:

Ronald Reagan of Hollywood has pitted his mellifluous voice against President Kennedy in the battle for medical aid for the elderly. As a result it looks as if the old folks would lose out. He has caused such a deluge of mail to swamp Congress that Congressmen want to postpone action on the medical bill until 1962. What they don’t know, of course, is that Ron Reagan is behind the mail; also that the American Medical Association is paying for it.

Reagan is the handsome TV star for General Electric . . . Just how this background qualifies him as an expert on medical care for the elderly remains a mystery. Nevertheless, thanks to a deal with the AMA, and the acquiescence of General Electric, Ronald may be able to outinfluence the President of the United States with Congress.24
Reagan’s recorded remarks are quite extensive, and reveal a determined and in-depth attack on the principles of Medicare (and Social Security), going well beyond opposition to King-Anderson or any other particular piece of legislation.
My name is Ronald Reagan. I have been asked to talk on the several subjects that have to do with the problems of the day. . .

Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program. . . .

But at the moment I'd like to talk about another way because this threat is with us and at the moment is more imminent. One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. . . . Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We have an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.25

And what was this frightful threat that Reagan perceived as “imminent”?

. . . Congressman Forand introduced the Forand Bill. This was the idea that all people of Social Security age should be brought under a program of compulsory health insurance. Now, this would not only be our senior citizens, this would be the de­pendents and those who are disabled, this would be young peo­ple if they are dependents of someone eligible for Social Security. . . .

It should be obvious that Reagan’s description of the Forand bill is a description of any Medicare-type program, not just a specific piece of legislation.26 The idea that people of “Social Security age should be brought under a program of compulsory health insurance,” just is the idea of Medicare.

CONTINUED...

http://geotheology.blogspot.com /

As they "own and operate" the airwaves,

The Republicans have ever since made out that FDR, Truman, JFK and all Liberal Democrats are "Socialists." Now that they largely own and operate almost all of what's on the airwaves, they're free to lie that what they mean is Liberal Democrats really are "Communists."

[turbinetree]

7. And Ronnie is still a scum bag..............................

thanks , for the reminder on why I think he was the most despicable person, right along with Goldwater, Nixon and the cowboy called Bush

[indepat]

3. Universal national health insurance did not fly, but a national security state began to flourish

shortly thereafter.

[ErikJ]

4. Innocent days before the health insurance companies became For-Profit and

represented by 100's of lobbyists in Congress.

[Cha]

5. Nice.. I see America had the same shiteheads back then..

"Almost as soon as the reinvigorated bill was announced, the once-powerful American Medical Association (AMA) capitalized on the nation’s paranoia over the threat of Communism and, despite Truman’s assertions to the contrary, attacked the bill as “socialized medicine.” Even more outrageous, the AMA derided the Truman administration as “followers of the Moscow party line.” During congressional hearings in 1946, the AMA proposed its own plan emphasizing private insurance options, which actually represented a political shift from its previous position opposing any third party members in the delivery of health care."