(Blue Cross to America - Don't Get Sick)
Why don't they get it? Why is it, every time the question of Universal Health Care comes up a wave of hysteria breaks over the country like an Indonesian Tsunami? It's been that way in 1941. It's been that way in 1945. It's been that way in 1948. It's been that way in 1949. It's been that way in 1961. Do I have to go on?
You get the picture - everybody reading this blog gets the picture. Everybody with half a brain gets the picture. And we all know who the enemy is. The ones thumbing their noses and laughing and dreaming hysteria up.
I've been running entries regarding the historic aspect of this argument for months now. I am always turning up new items that point out just how old this question is and just how insane the argument against it has become, and just how scared the Insurance industry has become and how well entrenched they are to wage war.
But in case you were curious to hear more - I found an episode from the radio series "America United" which was moderated by a David Brinkley. This show is from November 13, 1949. It features CIO spokesman Harry Reid (no relation), Nathan Robertson of the Labor Press Association, A.L. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and W.R. Williamson, referred to as a "consulting actuary"(in actuality, a spokesman for the Insurance Industry).
Reid kicks it off:
Harry Reed (CIO): “Well, of course we have arrived at this present situation that confronts us for the simple reason that the group that has assumed responsibility for medical care has completely failed to live up to that responsibility. Any group that assumes responsibility, any voluntary group in our country, is required by the people to carry out the responsibility. The American Medical Association, to which you referred, has stifled the overwhelming desire of the medical profession itself throughout the country to give the people health care. So now the people are turning to the only agency that is left to them and that is the Congress to obtain this needed health care. Inasmuch as Free Enterprise has failed in this instance, we turn to our government for assistance. That is the time-honored method of the American people.”
Sixty years ago. The argument and the fears are the same - exactly the same. Only the faces are different and the check books are fatter.
Other than that. The Health Insurance lobby and their warm regard for people boils down to this - "We like your money - it's you we're not crazy about."
Don't get sick.
