AMA Denounced Medicare in 1964! Resist Conservative ‘Group Think’ and Pundits’ Dictates. Support Health Care Reform with Public Option!
Please let us resist the conservative ‘group think’ and stop listening to the dictates of the pundits. They are hoping that we will listen and act as they dictate then they can claim susccess of their predictions. Don’t give them the satisfaction. They are being paid to be pundits; their motives are far from pure. They do not care about anything but raking in the big bucks. Americans NEEDS good health care reform in 2010 and we NEED the Medicare-type public option.
“The federal government’s involvement with this issue (of compulsory health insurance) began in earnest in 1934. [6] In that year President Franklin Roosevelt established the Committee on Economic Security (CES) and charged it with drafting a Social Security bill. The Social Security Act signed into law on August 14, 1935, empowered the Social Security Board (SSB) to study “related” areas, and on August 15, 1935, Roosevelt appointed an Interdepartmental Committee to Coordinate Health and Welfare Activities to pursue the health insurance issue.”
“Legislative efforts in the 1930s and 1940s went nowhere. The American Medical Association (AMA) strongly opposed compulsory national health insurance, denouncing it as socialized medicine and mounting costly efforts to defeat it. [10] President Roosevelt withheld his active support. Opinion polls indicated strong public opposition, with 76.3 percent of the public in a 1942 Fortune poll saying that the government should not provide free medical care (Cantril 1951: 440). You can read all about this at: www.cato.org/pubs/ (This is exactly what is being done today. The private insurance companies reportedly are spending millions weekly. The media is colluding in this so as to boost its own advertising revenues.)
The resulting Medicare Bill– prized by many today and some of whom likely opposed it in the 1940’s and 50’s — was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 30, 1965; 31 years later! How many of those with Medicare today would give it up? We can save $Billions by rolling all of the multiple types of public health care plans that now exist (SAGA, HUSHKY, Medicaid, etc) into one Medicare-type Public Option plan. Focus on reducing Medicare fraud and put all of the adminstrative savings into covering more people.
More than a million medical professionals today support health care reform with a public option! Those with Medicare can move anywhere in the country and they still have Medicare; they do not have to wait 30, 60 or 90 days; they cannot be denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition. That is what we all need: A Medicare-type public option. Write, call, email, fax, get in touch with your elected representatives. They are hearing from the lobbyists; let them hear from you.
Like many others, I wish that President Obama had more direct involvement with crafting the original health care bill; instead he expected members of Congress to act like responsible adults, so he left it up to them. He had too many things on the radar. Being a smart person, he thought that the moral clarity and the economic imperatives were so clear that Democrats and Republicans would act in the best interest of the American people. He was wrong. Now let us all demand that our elected represntatives act in our own best interest and pass health care with a public option.