NOTES IN THE NEWS
Notes in the News Progress We of The Progressive are said by some of our cynical critics to be incurable believers in the concept of human progress, and perhaps we are. But we confess there...
...people spend on the care of their health . . . around $20 billion a year...
...From some of the things we read in the Congressional Record, at least a few of the descendants of Congressman Campbell find the international issue as lacking in complications as he found the national and local issues of his time...
...the other prohibited the use of U.S...
...But we confess there are dark moments when our faith falters...
...After examining the factors that have driven costs so high in the nation's seven thousand hospitals (worth $16 billion, and with one million employes), Business Week observed: "Any businessman might assume considerable planning had gone into their growth in the last several decades...
...Its eloquent emphasis on the social and economic character of the challenge south of the border has evoked a wide and enthusiastic response in this country and in Central and South America...
...Campbell won a smashing victory...
...P.P.S...
...These 130 million private insurance policyholders, said Business Week, "pay better than 5.5 billion dollars a year in premiums and they get back 4.5 billion a year in benefits . . . but . . . U.S...
...He is from Italy...
...The McKinley Bill is for protection, with nothing free...
...The antagonists were, in this corner, Congressman Timothy Campbell, Tammany's Irish hack and a veteran^ of many campaigns, and, in this corner, Anthony Rinaldo, a first generation American of Italian descent running on the Republican ticket...
...Communication between Congressmen and their constituents, we brooded, has fallen to a new low, especially when compared with the great Philippics of the past...
...Campbell had but one short speech which he delivered everywhere: "There is two issues...
...these governments can be strong only if cherished in the minds and hearts of the people...
...Are you in favor of Italy or Ireland...
...This is just plain stupid," said Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Minnesota Democrat...
...Business Week hinted, without actually lapsing into heresy, that order might gradually develop out of chaos if the Federal government, through the Social Security approach, had a direct interest in the insurance business...
...T h e United States had poured millions of dollars into arming General Batista's military establishment against "internal subversion," but its 30,000 to 40,000 heavily armed troops collapsed when confronted by Fidel Castro's 1,000 guerrillas—who had the support of the people...
...More important," continued this voice of business, "only about twenty per cent of the nation's population has any broad coverage against the cost of illness . . . More than forty million have no protection at all . . . More than one hundred million have insurance only against the costs of hospitalization and carry none against the costs of doctors' services...
...Mushrooming suburbs, bursting with local pride, compete with each other in developing hospital facilities in blithe disregard of existing, often underused, facilities nearby...
...But this is one of the New Frontiers we are not likely to reach soon...
...Having thus disposed of the international issue, and thanking you for your attention, I will now retire...
...The big change in our time would seem to be that our candidates are obliged to cope with the international issue whereas Congressman Campbell, in those halcyon days of isolation, was required to analyze and debate only the major conflicts as they showed up in the national and local issues he discussed...
...McNamara and his band of generals called on Congress to wipe out two restrictions on military aid to Latin America adopted in 1959...
...Insurance cost increases are in turn directly traceable to the astronomical rise in hospital costs, thoroughly detailed by Selig Greenberg in the April and May issues of The Progressive...
...This will probably be the path the United States will follow in hunting for better means to help meet the mounting cost of illness...
...A national issue and a local issue...
...Business Looks at Health One of the most frequently heard— and superficially persuasive—arguments invoked against the Kennedy Administration's medical aid for the aged plan is that the great majority of Americans—130 million—are already protected by private health insurance plans...
...There is two bills before the country—the Mills Bill and the McKinley Bill...
...One of these had put a ceiling on the total amount that could be spent for military aid...
...P.S...
...I am from Ireland...
...Cuba itself provides the most deadly rebuttal to the President's program...
...If so, costs would be lowered, the rise in insurance premiums halted, and the private companies would find new markets in which to expand...
...Pointing out that the present crisis has come about in large measure because of the swift-paced revolution in medical technology, Business Week concluded: "The institutions that have served well in the past have to change if they're to keep pace and these social changes come more slowly...
...It makes me wonder how foolish we can get in our foreign aid program," said Senator Wayne L. Morse, Oregon Democrat...
...Having thus disposed of the local issue, and thanking you for your attention, I will now retire...
...Are you in favor of Russia or America...
...Words & Deeds In no area of American foreign policy has the Kennedy Administration struck so hopeful and affirmative a note from the beginning as it has in its presentation of the problems of Latin America...
...A Federal plan along broader lines might well result in a revision of private insurance schemes—and lower costs...
...In the meantime the health and hospital crisis deepens...
...Shortly afterward, however, our faith in progress was restored—in a perverse sort of way...
...First, the national issue...
...And yet for six months and many thousands of words, the President and his aides have insisted, correctly in our judgment, that our one great hope of preventing the spread af Castroism was to build the social and economic foundations of political democracy...
...Representative Barratt O'Hara, Illinois Democrat, summed up the case against the new approach when he said the Pentagon is asking for "a blank check from Congress to maintain governments in power...
...No Relief in Sight In contrast to the American Medical Association's broadside blast at the Federal medical plan as "socialized medicine," and its alarums that the government is about to "take over" all medicine, Business Week takes a reasonable and realistic approach...
...But they do come—and the result is usually a combination of government and private endeavor...
...As important as any feature of the proposed legislation are the provisions for at-home nursing care, and nursing home treatment for patients whose health needs do not require vastly more expensive hospital facilities...
...T h e Mills Bill is for free trade with everything free...
...Thus, the benefits cover less than one quarter of the total bill...
...We were reading Leo Katcher's The Big Bankroll (Harper & Brothers), the story of crime and corruption in New York City in the days of Arnold Rothstein, the notorious gambler...
...New hospitals are built, old ones expanded, and millions of dollars are spent on equipping them—all with hardly any planning...
...He would be wrong...
...This was once the basic position of the President...
...Two of the Administration's best friends who happen to be two of our best authorities on Latin America promptly exploded in the Senate...
...This happened the other day when we came across some especially idiotic speeches inserted in the Congressional Record by members of Congress who are even now actively campaigning for reelection...
...His friends hope he will abandon the old frontier of the generals in the Pentagon for the New Frontier to which he once beckoned us...
...That is why the shock was so great when, a fortnight or so ago, the President sent Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and a retinue of generals to Capitol Hill to urge the immediate approval of substantially more military aid for the poverty-ridden nations of Latin America...
...President Kennedy, responding to pressures from the Pentagon, now seems convinced that a big danger in Latin America is the threat of internal subversion generated by forces operating out of Castro's Cuba...
...Speaker Sam Rayburn announced as this was being written that there would be no House action on the Administration bill in this session of Congress...
...The author tells the story of a Congressional campaign at the turn of the century...
...military aid has served to strengthen the very forces whose feudal policies maintain and magnify the conditions which provide fertile ground for popular demand for extremist solutions...
...Recently the conservative magazine, Business Week, exposed the argument as a fraud by simply applying, in its customary businesslike way, the familiar yardstick of dollars and cents...
...Do you want everything free or do you want to pay for everything...
...There are not enough votes to bring the plan out of the powerful— and conservative—House Ways and Means Committee...
...Through its influence, persuasion, and guidance, and the Administration's emphasis on out-patient treatment, hospital services might be coordinated on a community-wide, or even statewide, basis...
...Hospitals within communities unnecessarily duplicate costly, specialized equipment...
...The unhappy history of Latin America in our time demonstrates all too convincingly that U.S...
...Khrushchev is from Russia...
...military aid for internal security purposes...
...Most private hospital insurance plans aggravate thex hospital crisis by requiring hospitalization of patients before payment of claims...
...Having thus disposed of the national issue, I will now devote myself to the local issue, which is the Dago, Rinaldo...
...You may think this isn't quite fair, and perhaps it isn't, but then you don't read some of the stuff in the Congressional Record that we do...
...The growth of private insurance plans has slowed to almost a standstill, largely because of premium increases averaging upwards of seven per cent each year for more than a decade...
...1 am from America...
Vol. 25 • August 1961 • No. 8
