Who Did You Say Your Doctor Was? Updated
("Those pills are 25 bucks a-PIECE?")
(I originally posted this in February and am reposting it now in its complete form, as opposed to the excerpt which I ran in February. It's a nice companion piece to the post I did earlier this week, and further evidence our friends at the AMA have been doing this a long-long time.)
In case anyone thought the whole concept of Universal Health Care was something cooked up in the 1990's, I'm here to tell you it just ain't so.
Nope, it's been with us forever and attempts to introduce a Universal Health Care program go back to the days just post World War 2. Over sixty years of wrangling, cajoling, hand-wringing and warnings of dire consequences. And strangely, nothing has changed.
In 1945 a proposal known as the Wagner/Murray/Dingell Bill was introduced, establishing a system of Universal Health care for all Americans, regardless of financial status. And almost immediately the forces of paranoia, propaganda and dire consequences roared into place.
A lot of this came via the AMA, whose President was the dubious Dr. Morris Fishbein, the most vocal opponent of Universal Health Care and had the membership of the AMA to tap into.
This clip, from a 1948 CBS Radio program called "In My Opinion", features Senator James E. Murray (D-Montana) who co-authored the bill in question. His vocal opponent was Representative A.L. Miller (R-Nebraska) whose paranoiac doomsday rant belied the fact that he was, prior to his stint in Congress, a practicing surgeon and a member of the AMA.
Do I hear conflict of interest? Do I hear a certain breach of ethics?
Who ever said Politics was ethical? It's politics, fer chrissake!
Miller - "I saw physicians on clean surgical cases without surgical masks or rubber gloves. They were chattering like magpies over the open abdomen"
Murray - "But I do want to talk to Americas doctors. To the doctors through the country who are busy treating the sick, to the practicing doctor who usually hears of health insurance over from the Political Doctors, who are obstructing an intelligent, practical program."
Just like everything we try to get through congress that is actually good for the average murkan.
Like Wagner in '34 I believe, overturned by pukes with Taft-Hartley in '37.
The big money banks and Corporations never give up until they have all of our money, and when they run out, they take our not yet taxed dollars besides.
The Wagner Act, the Labor Relations Act of 1935 brought the US into the modern industrial world of labor. We were way behind.
The Republicans took both houses of Congress in 1947 and went on a rampage. The Taft Hartley Act was a 'revision' of the Wagner Act. It did not repeal it altogether, they couldn't have done that, but it did put in some nasty things.
The worst thing to me is it allowed States to write laws that prohibited agreements between Labor and Management that recognized the union.
The so called Right to Work, an early example of how the Right hijacks the English language to make it sound like they are giving working people something, when in fact, they are taking so much away.
Today the 'Right to Work' - I say 'THE RIGHT TO WORK CHEAP' States are the Red States. Small wonder.
Truman vetoed it but his veto was overridden.
That Congress wrote the INFAMOUS National Security Act of 1947 which established the NSA, the CIA, the Military Industrial Complex and National Security State. Unfortunately Truman signed that one. The rest right to this minute is history.
The Democrats took the Congress back but they couldn't pass health care. 60 years we have been waiting.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
This is what happens when you Joe Plumberize the media.
Wingnuts like Bachmann are screaming their fool heads off about us running out of poor people, about how Obama will force us all into socialism (as if that's a great evil) because he's proposing a modest tax increase for those who make more than 200K a year to pay for health care for poor folks.
Let's get one thing straight: Obama ain't no Robin Hood. If I was him, I'd be raising their taxes considerably more than he's proposing and I wouldn't give a shit who calls it class warfare. We're not even close to socialism.
But Robin Hood, whether real or apocryphal, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, is what made him a national folk hero. In the liberal soul, there's something enduringly romantic about socialism.
JP
http://giveusthisdayourdailtydread.blogspot.com
i thought the wingers were worried about running out of RICH people...
Before he was chosen by the Fortune 500 to live in the WH, Ronnie RayGun, the quintessential Amiable Dunce, was positive that Medicare was the beginning of socialized medicine in the US. Accountants would decide whether or not a procedure could be done - like the bean counters at the health insurance companies in 2009 don't.
Iirc, the Brits went to true national health system where doctors work for the gummint (gasp) as a sop to all the Tommies returning from war with a knowledge of weapons and tactics. There was a genuine fear among the upper classes.
Of course, we have the US equivalent of the Roman games to keep the masses compliant - American Idol.
...politicians talk about how the money that will be required to fund the universal healthcare program will be put into a "fund" just like the way social security was to be put in a "fund".
It's probly just as well it never happened, ...it woulda been just another fund that Congress could (and would have) raided, to balance the budget. (just like they did with social security)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
In Dallas, we had excellent universal health care in the '50s and '60s. It was provided at county-operated Parkland Hospital, the same place they took JFK after the assassination. Parkland was widely regarded as one of the best hospitals in the country. Somehow, socialist medicine thrived in that hotbed of conservatism. As the rich and middle classes began buying health insurance, however, the quality of public services at Parkland declined (longer wait times).
Want affordable health care in America? Outlaw health insurance and thereby force providers to charge what folks can actually afford to pay. At the end of the day, insurance is just a welfare scheme for the rich.
2) Great nym!
Insurance companies are parasites, purely and simply. They contribute NOTHING, and extract vital resources. Bodies infested with parasites are weakened, eventually die of the infestation, if it is left alone.
Or, I suppose you could class them as 'symbiots' with disease and injury, for they prosper as long as those other events occur.
BUt in eather case, they do not serve PEOPLE; only rob them...
I read somewhere (I thought here, but obviously not) the autoworker's unions were pushing for it the most, but the BIG automakers felt it was an expense they could handle themselves, and didn't want goverment involved. Why? (are you sitting down?) They were too big to fail.
They felt sure the limitless money would keep flowing in forever.
Now they say the health insurance they provide is bankrupting them.
So much for the experts. Next time they speak-- RUN.
far left loon >.<
free universal healthcare, when the actual numbers weren't part of my yearly income tax filings.
When I got my first job out of school, we still payed premiums and were issued healthcare "cards" that were only good until the next payment. I think I paid $30 every 3 months, being single. According to this years income tax, my "share" is over $900 and my wife's share is $600. Every year that amount seems to jump more and more.
When my wife went on disability, she/we got to keep the insurance for 2 more years at something like 25$ a month. Her former employer picked up the larger amount.
After two years, it expired. Cobra told us it was going to cost us a little over 700$ a month to keep Me covered.
What you pay is not much. Now, I'm not saying that it's not difficult to come up with the extra funds. Especially when you've been laid off. But it could be worse. You could be here.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
i pay $4500/year for major medical with prescription... no dental...
nothing special, although some preventative care (mamograms) is "free"...
oh, and a $1500 deductible...
see, you're already ahead of the game!
Free??
"Secular humanism -- a fearless, realistic world view replete with doubt and scepticism that attempts to attain an unachievable state of equilibrium between and among the human qualities of reason, intuition, imagination, memory, ethics and common sense.
As another Canadian, it's never really been free. That is a myth: we've always paid. So it's gone up a bit. It's still much better than what our American cousins are faced with.
If you are unemployed, or can't pay, you still get coverage. That's Canada: you wouldn't be turned away!!!
In those olden days, if you couldn't keep up with the premiums, you got full coverage if you paid three month's charges (it was re-instated). I know, I did it once (back when I made only $200 a week.)p>
far left loon >.<
It's not free. You pay in to it. But it's a helluva lot better than what we have here.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
if I'm not mistaken, has had some form of universal health care since Bismark.
Europe has far superior health care. Also, they have more vacation time, more liberal policies for time off for child-care and family leave. They work less hours. The quality of life is better over there.
Here? All we care about is productivity. We have the most productive workers in the world, also some of the unhappiest and unhealthiest in the industrialized world. Are we still a part of that world since we don't make anything anymore? I don't know...
Not any more.
Seems like a bargain to me? (In response to Canuck :)
dummies for Biotech companies better up your health insurance.
no doubt open sores with plastic hairs sprouting out of your skin lesion probably won't be covered.
you find that ill health is big business so generation of disease through the marketplace is a win-win situation. Another serious disconnect.
Had American healthcare followed the well known and accepted models of the United States Post Office or what was done on nationwide scales with transportation or indeed what the original ATT achieved in national standardization and scale of conformity we likely would all be happier healthcare wise.
Sadly as noted above the doctors and the AMA early on chose to keep American healthcare from going the way of the American post office.
Today we can send a letter from New York City to San Francisco and it all works through one system. Not 100 or 1000 systems.
American healthcare instead of having this universal quality is broken up into many small systems which do not allow for the common good and commonwealth of American healthcare to exist or flourish.
Each small system has a set of rules,paperwork and standards for getting a cut looked at or a broken arm set or a heart bypass. Each health insurance provider functions independent from the next and then all this is poured into mulitple private systems of HMOs,clinics and hospitals which also all have separate intake,process and follow up procedures based on independent and separated healthcare decision making and private payment schemes.
Unlike the American Post Office you cannot in confidence buy a service from American healthcare either in New York City or San Francisco on common terms or with any standards interchangeable.
Imagine if there were many American post office systems all trying to function independently of each other. What would it cost to send a letter or parcel across 100 miles or 1,000 miles? Or ten letters 700 miles each to ten different locations all set up with different Post Offices?
How is UPS or FedEx set up? Universal commonality which makes it possible to send items coast and coast over one system and track those items quite well via a computer while doing so.
American healthcare? Just in the surrounding community I am currently in there easily are seven to ten separately run clinics,HMOs and hospitals. All run by separate private setups. So one can not easily pass from service provider to another without having to pass through several paperwork schemes/systems and screenings of who you can see or cannot see based on your health care provider/insurance or if you have no insurance whether you can pay and how you will pay. You pay or you do not get to stay in the system. The carless guy who arrives in a taxi expected to pay up and out as well as the guy who pulls up in a brand new $70,000 luxury SUV.
Mail a letter in the United States? We have a universal system.
Get a physical or have a deep cough checked by a medical doctor? American healthcare based on a piecemeal system.
The costs of American health care are going to the moon. The outcomes are known already well enough for the American economy and social fabric if this trip to the fiscal moon continues.
Universal American healthcare offers better solutions for more Americans more fully across the spectrum of American economy and society.
Decades ago the AMA was wrong. That is plain to see now.
Americans do understand the concept of universal service provision and provide. It is time for WashingtonDC to put as much political energy into American healthcare as it does in the Pentagon.
In fact it is well past the time already. Has become a urgent matter that cannot be put off longer.
Over sixty years of wrangling, cajoling, hand-wringing and warnings of dire consequences. And strangely, nothing has changed.
have to argue with that - plenty has changed... insurance cos and hmo's have greater profits, for one...
and, check it out - that is a cigarette in that lecher's fingers...
aaah, those were the days...
Dr. Fishbein's [mentioned in the post] opposite number today could be Dr. David Himmelstein, who supports single-payer, debated Len Nichols, a person representing health care who is backing Obama's plan, yesterday on Democracy Now!. Nichols did not make a very strong case, erroneously claiming that under a single-payer system one does not have freedom of choice regarding the selection of doctors and hospitals. As Himmelstein pointed out the exact opposite would be true under single-payer, that one can choose any doctor or hospital that one wishes. Co-host Juan Gonzalez noted that he had just had minor shoulder surgery and that he had to contact so many different people and agencies [the insurance company, the laboratory, the hospital] in order to make sure that his bill was paid. Himmelstein said that single-payer would eliminate that bureaucratic superfluous paperwork. Nichols did admit that Gonzalez and other Americans should not have to deal with that nonsense but still insisted that the insurance companies are a necessary part of Obama's plan [which Obama himself is in agreement with].
As writer Dave Lindorff pointed out yesterday in an excellent article in Counterpunch {"America's Stupid Health Care Debate"], "Canadians have complete freedom to choose their physicians. They pay nothing to go to hospital." Lindorff went on to note that he had interviewed a hospital administrator in Canada who had previously worked managing a US hospital. Lindorff wrote that the hospital administrator "said a whole wing of the facility in the US was devoted to billing and accounting staff, while he had only two people for that job in Canada, 'mostly to handle the bills of the occasional American tourist!'". [Some 20 percent of every US health care dollar goes for paperwork].
Lindorff wonders [as I do] why Obama did not consult, when he was coordinating people to discuss health care, Canadian health experts [or from other countries such as Germany, France, Sweden, England, etc.] to discuss and analyze how efficient health care can be achieved in this country. It is also surprising that C & L did not see fit to have yesterday's debate on Democracy Now! on their blog.
FDR wanted to include the provision of health care in the Social Security Act, and maybe beyond that.
The AMA did its usual freakout against any public health care it didn't like.
A potential problem to any federal health care reform plan which would arise at the political level of considering the eventual passage of such a bill was that of regional and racial politics.
Much of FDR's governing New Deal coalition was made up of Southern Democrats, who were staunchly segregationist, and they quite accurately (though immorally) feared that a federal role in publicly provided health care would also lead to civil rights' extension into health care.
However, it never got to that stage, as incipient reforms were strangled in the crib
As the ex-MP in Moore's Sicko explains, the national health plan was started soon after WW II in Britain. I'm sure an American or two must have noticed back then.
what i heard was the fairness doctrine at work.
what god wants, god gets! god help us all.
but make it illegal for medical insurance companies to turn a profit
case solved
i win
make me king
That's essentially the case in Germany. And the private insurance industry hasn't collapsed.
Or the children?
The way things are set up here, if anything happens(at any time) You're doomed to a financial hell.
sad, that such a great nation can't even provide a healthy life for it's tax payers.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
AMA, american medical assassins, has outlived its usefulness.
The A.M.A. does not believe that creating a public health insurance option for non-disabled individuals under age 65 is the best way to expand health insurance coverage and lower costs. The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans.
AMA: profit, guaranteed; health care, not so much
http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20090820/capt.8b52be...
Just like the Tom Ridge "revelations" on terror alerts, this history lesson on how the GOP doesn't care a hoot about the average American...shouldn't surprise anyone.
These guys are just EVIL.
The goal of Morris Fishbein was to make doctors as rich as possible (and this essentially remains the goal of the AMA). Luckily (this is coming from a (almost) physician) AMA membership among new physicians is falling rapidly.
I am disappointed though, that you'd link to a pseduo-science, anti-medicine page to trash on Morris Fishbein, there are way more legitimate ways to document what he was all about. Don't be like FoxNews... check your sources for credibility.
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