In the 1930s the AMA denounced Social Security as a "compulsory socialistic tax"

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/udall/congrept/89th/650331.htm



March 31, 1965
Vol. IV, No. 2

Medicare v. Eldercare -A Big Issue Finally Resolved

As I write this report the House of Representatives is about to resolve an issue that has been stirring passions -- and congressional mail -- for years on end. By the time you read this the vote should have occurred. I am writing you today in order that you may share my thoughts on the eve of a great vote affecting the lives and needs of all of us.

The bill we are about to vote on is "Medicare" -- not a new subject to you or me. In fact, for four years and three campaigns we have been doing a lot of talking about it in Arizona. Many of you will recall that one of my 1962 newsletters discussed the subject in the mistaken belief that I would have a chance to vote on it that year; I didn't. snip

In the judgment of this congressman the medical profession has been badly advised and poorly led by its national organization, the American Medical Association. Too often the AMA has taken the path of obstruction when a progressive and humanitarian course would have been better for the profession and the country. Dominated by an obsessive fear of "socialized medicine" (which I oppose, and which nearly all Members of Congress oppose), the AMA has played a largely negative role through the years.

In the 1930s the AMA denounced Social Security itself as a "compulsory socialistic tax" which would lead to totalitarianism. Later the AMA opposed extension of Social Security benefits to the permanently and totally disabled at age 50, calling it "a serious threat to American medicine." It tried to stop Federal grants for maternal and child welfare programs, charging that this program to reduce the death rate among mothers and children tended "to promote communism." And, finally, the AMA fought long and hard against adoption of Blue Cross-type voluntary health insurance programs, the very thing they now praise most highly.

"It is a sad fact," the Journal of the American Hospital Association wrote in 1949, "that through the 1930s and early 1940s the AMA did not believe in voluntary sickness insurance, did almost everything possible to prevent its development."

The AMA's zig-zag course reached a climax of some kind in late 1964 when the election results made it clear that Medicare would probably pass. The association hastily constructed a proposal called Eldercare and embarked upon a multi-million-dollar advertising program to sell it to the Congress and the country as a substitute for Medicare. The Eldercare ads, many of which appeared in Arizona, took two strange tacks:


1. Medicare is socialized medicine. It goes too far.
2. Medicare should be defeated because it doesn't go far enough.

[kirby]

1. Not to mention the record Ronnie cut...

[sharesunited]

2. Reagan earned his conservative chops partly because he toured the country warning against Medicare.

[ejpoeta]

3. what would happen, do you think, if we had actual journalists on tv with the

republicans who are against the public option or anyone else who is disparaging it.... now, you'll have to use your imagination, because we all know the current 'journalists' would never ask this... but... what if we asked these folks if they think we should get rid of medicare if it is so awful... i mean, there is a more than 90% satisfaction rating from people who are on medicare, but it is a public plan.... and public plans are bad.... so, maybe they think it should be dismantled?? sure they probably think it, but would they have the guts to say it??

[kirby]

4. They kinda dance around it.

I heard Andrea Mitchell say to Mike Pence this morning whether he was going to cancel Medicare to which he said, 'Oh absolutely not'. That was her opportunity to really challenge all the lies he was telling about 'Obamas government controlled health care plan', but she didn't bother to follow up. And they continue to allow the repukes to quote the 'Lewin Group'. I have not heard one so called journalist challenge the fact that the 'Lewin Group' was owned bu a major health care company.

[ejpoeta]

5. i think that's the worst part about the whole thing. the complicity of the journalists...

or at the very least their negligence. they are supposed to be getting the information, but instead they just count their paycheck and phone it in.

[Hannah Bell]

6. why would andrea mitchell challenge it? her husband got paid for helping to destroy it.

[BlooInBloo]

7. And DUers agree - listen to them whine about mandatory participation.