Medical progress
Hogeboom, William L.
D Medical progress espite the recently announced opposition of the Business Round Table, two news reports from late last year might be hopeful signs for...
...The plan called for health care to be financed and administered like Social Security...
...On December 16, leaders of ten organizations representing over 300,000 physicians appeared with the president in a photo-op to show their support for his plan...
...Although the idea of some kind of national health-care plan had been kicking around at the national level since before World War I, no president had put it on the national agenda until November 16, 1945, when Truman unveiled a comprehensive national health-insurance proposal...
...Led by Dr...
...William l. hqgeboom William L Hogebopm teaches history at Dowling College in Oakdale, New York...
...Of the various groups that immediately opposed the idea, the most powerful was the American Medical Association...
...This is certainly a welcome change in AMA attitudes...
...The AMA also fought President Lyndon Johnson's Medicare proposal...
...It would be paid through a 3 percent payroll tax, half by employers and half by employees, and would cover medical, hospital, and nursing care for all Americans...
...Like the National Rifle Association today, the AMA feared that any compromise on its part would lead to total defeat...
...Ironically, polls taken even before Truman introduced his plan indicated the public was very supportive of government health insurance...
...The AMA attacked this plan as a foot-in-the-door scheme that would lead to "socialized medicine...
...He fought the idea of group practice among doctors, prepaid medical and hospital plans, and the extension of Social Security benefits to the disabled under sixty-five...
...The AMA claimed the plan would "enslave" doctors, regiment society, and lead to a totalitarian state in America...
...It took a monumental effort on Johnson's part (he was an expert political charmer and arm-twister) to get Medicare through Congress...
...In spite of Truman's come-from-behind re-election, government health insurance was a dead issue for the rest of his term...
...Yet, the AMA labeled Truman's plan "socialized medicine" and the name stuck...
...Truman's plan did not get off the ground, and government health insurance was not even mentioned in the 1948 Democratic Party National Platform...
...And earlier in the month, the governing body of the American Medical Association, whose numbers have declined to well under 300,000, met in New Orleans and were reported as seriously split over policy and strategy regarding the president's plan...
...Morris Fishbein, long-time editor of the AMA Journal, and bankrolled by a massive AMA war chest fattened by assessing members an extra $25 each, the organization launched a media blitz...
...In the next administration, Dwight Eisenhower put forth a $15-million federal reinsurance plan to protect private health insurance companies from abnormal losses in order to encourage them to broaden their benefits andclientele...
...Its ads reportedly reached 10,000 newspapers and 16,000 radio stations...
...These two incidents are a far cry from the post-World War II 1940s when a unified and powerful AM A was primarily responsible for the failure of President Harry Truman's national health-insurance proposal...
...At a time when Eastern Europe and China were falling to the Communists, this theme stuck a chord with the public...
...Apparently those who put forth this argument are unaware that a great many Americans don't have much choice now under employerprovided plans which include "participating physicians...
...Many in the current AMA leadership are anxious not to be branded this time around as obstructionists or concerned only with their own self-interest...
...Too bad it comes nearly fifty years late...
...Today, not only the AMA but the whole health-care industry is divided over the Clinton plan...
...Fishbeinhad long been a vigorous opponent of attempts to reform or extend medical care...
...Instead of "socialized medicine," the scare phrase is "choice," or rather the supposed loss of it under Clinton's proposal...
...D Medical progress espite the recently announced opposition of the Business Round Table, two news reports from late last year might be hopeful signs for President Bill Clinton's health-care reform plan...
...Of course, patients can choose doctors outside their plan, but they have to pay extra for that choice...
...In 1942 a Fortune magazine poll found nearly 75 percent in favor and a Gallup Poll the following year found 59 percent in favor...
...Participants would be free to choose their own doctors who in turn would be paid according to a fee schedule negotiated by doctors and the government...
Vol. 121 • February 1994 • No. 4
