("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."
