- Sep 27, 2005
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HARRY S TRUMAN AND THE AMA
National Health Insurance and the AMA
In the 1940s, if an American president wanted to stir up a hornet's nest with the American Medical Association (AMA), all he had to do was propose some form of national health insurance. National health insurance already existed in many European nations, including Germany, which had established the first national system of compulsory sickness insurance in 1883. The first attempts to secure some form of national health insurance for the United States began in 1915 with an early proposal from the American Association for Labor Legislation to give medical coverage to workers and their dependents. Since reformers saw health insurance as a way to subordinate medical practice to public health and to change the method of payment from fee-for-service to salary or capitation (a single fee for each patient during each year), tensions arose when physicians saw this potential attack on their income and autonomy. After the 1938 elections President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a national health-care program to Congress, but the bill was not passed. Toward the end of his life he indicated he would press for health insurance once the war was over. In 1944 he asked Congress to agree to an "economic bill of rights," including a right to adequate medical care. Three months after the end of the war his successor, Harry S Truman, called upon Congress to pass a national program to assure citizens the right to adequate medical care and protection from the "economic fears" of illness. By the time President Truman brought a health-care bill to Congress on 19 November 1945, the AMA saw it as a full-fledged government attempt to regiment medicine and to control the freedom which the association's members had enjoyed for the ninety-eight years of its existence. "No socialized medicine!" buzzed the doctors.
The Truman Plan
Truman's plan was similar to Roosevelt's New Deal health program of 1938, but he emphasized different aspects. He was strongly committed to health insurance, and his five-point plan suggested
increased federal aid for constructing needed hospitals and other facilities;
expansion of public-health, maternal-health, and child-health services;
increased education and research for the medical profession;
compulsory health insurance; and
disability insurance.
His recommendations reversed the order of the 1938 program. Unlike Roosevelt's earlier program, which proposed a separate system of medical care for the needy, Truman proposed a single health-insurance system that would include all classes of society. It was this point that angered the AMA.
Reaction
Public reaction to Truman's plan was initially favorable, but Congress's reception was mixed. Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, the senior Republican, called the plan socialist. "It is to my mind the most socialistic measure this Congress has ever had before it," complained Taft. The AMA was furious. Ever since 1933, when its president had warned members to agree with the policy of the association, the AMA had fought against anything that sounded like "socialized medicine." "By this measure," said 170 AMA delegates of the policy-making group of the association, "the medical profession and the sick whom they treat will be directly under political control?and doctors in America will become clock watchers and slaves of a system. Now, if ever, those who believe in the American democracy must make their belief known to their representatives so that the attempt to enslave medicine as first among the professions, industries, or trades to be socialized will meet the ignominious defeat it deserves."
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468301638.html
National Health Insurance and the AMA
In the 1940s, if an American president wanted to stir up a hornet's nest with the American Medical Association (AMA), all he had to do was propose some form of national health insurance. National health insurance already existed in many European nations, including Germany, which had established the first national system of compulsory sickness insurance in 1883. The first attempts to secure some form of national health insurance for the United States began in 1915 with an early proposal from the American Association for Labor Legislation to give medical coverage to workers and their dependents. Since reformers saw health insurance as a way to subordinate medical practice to public health and to change the method of payment from fee-for-service to salary or capitation (a single fee for each patient during each year), tensions arose when physicians saw this potential attack on their income and autonomy. After the 1938 elections President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a national health-care program to Congress, but the bill was not passed. Toward the end of his life he indicated he would press for health insurance once the war was over. In 1944 he asked Congress to agree to an "economic bill of rights," including a right to adequate medical care. Three months after the end of the war his successor, Harry S Truman, called upon Congress to pass a national program to assure citizens the right to adequate medical care and protection from the "economic fears" of illness. By the time President Truman brought a health-care bill to Congress on 19 November 1945, the AMA saw it as a full-fledged government attempt to regiment medicine and to control the freedom which the association's members had enjoyed for the ninety-eight years of its existence. "No socialized medicine!" buzzed the doctors.
The Truman Plan
Truman's plan was similar to Roosevelt's New Deal health program of 1938, but he emphasized different aspects. He was strongly committed to health insurance, and his five-point plan suggested
increased federal aid for constructing needed hospitals and other facilities;
expansion of public-health, maternal-health, and child-health services;
increased education and research for the medical profession;
compulsory health insurance; and
disability insurance.
His recommendations reversed the order of the 1938 program. Unlike Roosevelt's earlier program, which proposed a separate system of medical care for the needy, Truman proposed a single health-insurance system that would include all classes of society. It was this point that angered the AMA.
Reaction
Public reaction to Truman's plan was initially favorable, but Congress's reception was mixed. Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, the senior Republican, called the plan socialist. "It is to my mind the most socialistic measure this Congress has ever had before it," complained Taft. The AMA was furious. Ever since 1933, when its president had warned members to agree with the policy of the association, the AMA had fought against anything that sounded like "socialized medicine." "By this measure," said 170 AMA delegates of the policy-making group of the association, "the medical profession and the sick whom they treat will be directly under political control?and doctors in America will become clock watchers and slaves of a system. Now, if ever, those who believe in the American democracy must make their belief known to their representatives so that the attempt to enslave medicine as first among the professions, industries, or trades to be socialized will meet the ignominious defeat it deserves."
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468301638.html
