Medicare Post-Mortem
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Medicare Post-Mortem The great Medicare debate in the Senate lasted from July 2 to July 17. Even before then, however, in other years and in...
...Finally, you can be sure, what we will have will be the state medicine of outright Socialism...
...To give the aged proper medical care, paid for out of an increased Social Security fund to which they themselves have contributed, seems to the progressives a fair and practical way of dealing with this difficult problem...
...invited his colleagues to visit his office and take a look at actual letters he had received from older people in distress...
...In different ways they would repeat over and over: "Look out...
...If government funds are spent to provide hospital and related medical care, the Congress must give directions as to how that money will be spent...
...As the average age of this group increases, their physical ills increase...
...one of the five Republicans who supported the bill, proudly introduced the patron saint of his party, whom he quoted as saying: "The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities...
...Lincoln, if you could listen, that is what we are trying to do—at least some of us.' It is a pity that Abraham Lincoln was not able to deliver a suitable reply...
...take care...
...The cost of nursing and hospital treatment grows each year...
...got to the heart of the matter when he said: "The enactment of the Kennedy proposal means government medicine...
...more and more diseases can be cured, and many others can now be alleviated...
...And the differences between the two groups were as much psychological as they were political...
...Senator Carl T. Curtis (R.-Neb...
...When left to their own resources, most of them are either forced to do without effective medical treatment or accept help from relatives who can seldom afford to take on the additional burden...
...He did so with the idea that intimate details about human suffering might break down the resistance of the more humane among the opposition...
...The argument of the progressives, on both sides of the aisle, was quite simple: The United States now has more than 17 million citizens over 65, and additional thousands are being added to the number every month...
...Vast amounts of information have been assembled about the health and finances of our older citizens...
...this may seem innocent, but in the end it will prove dangerous...
...In a rejoinder to Kuchel, the mellifluous Senate Minority Leader, Everett McKinley Dirksen, attempted to slip the saint back into his own conservative segment of the Grand Old Party...
...Even before then, however, in other years and in other sessions of Congress, many discussions and investigations of the subject had taken place...
...Toward the end of the Senate debate an amusing little incident involving Abraham Lincoln came up...
...But the new medicine is expensive...
...Senator Curtis also added a liberal measure of something which I had hoped we had seen the last of: suspicion and fear of Europe...
...At the same time, statistics demonstrate that a large proportion of the aged have little or no income...
...Senator Thomas H. Kuchel (R.Cal...
...Medicine is making rapid progress...
...What they are opposed to, though, is any change in our government...
...As these men displayed their views on Medicare on the Senate floor, time and again one sensed this fear...
...But Senator Humphrey was wrong in thinking that the men against the Medicare bill might be cruel or unsympathetic...
...The real division in the Senate was between progressives and conservatives...
...In fact, what strikes me most about last month's Senate proceedings is the slight affect all this data had on the final vote...
...Despite President Kennedy's press conference assertion, the basic division on the Medicare bill was not between Democrats and Republicans...
...The Medicare bill, he inferred, would take us along the road so unhappily followed by England, Germany, France and others among those strange countries across the Atlantic...
...He quoted the same passage, and then added: "Mr...
...He might have swung a number of votes...
...One of the leading progressives, Senator Hubert Humphrey (D.Minn...
...I am sure that, to a man, they are not opposed to charity or human helpfulness...
...There will be contracts with hospitals and doctors...
Vol. 45 • August 1962 • No. 16
