Government Medicine v. Public Health

President Kennedy has clearly mounted a major campaign to tie some form of federal medical care to Social Security. The White House, it is said, has six high-level aides working full time on medicare propaganda. Various groups of citizens emerge from the White House repeating the words of official advocacy. And on May 20 the President, with the help of a Hollywood troupe, will speak in Madison Square Garden to urge passage of the King-Anderson medicare bill.

Simultaneously the opposition has increased. It is now taking the form of individual protest by physicians themselves. In New Jersey some 200 doctors have signed a resolution asserting their refusal to take part in the King-Anderson plan, even if adopted, while promising to “continue to care for the medically indigent, young and old, as we have in the past.” The protest movement has spread rapidly to California, Texas, New York, Illinois, Louisiana, and North Carolina.

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W. F. Rickenbacker

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President Kennedy has clearly mounted a major campaign to tie some form of federal medical care to Social Security. The White House, it is said, has six high-level aides working full time on medicare propaganda. Various groups of citizens emerge from the White House repeating the words of official advocacy. And on May 20 the President, with the help of a Hollywood troupe, will speak in Madison Square Garden to urge passage of the King-Anderson medicare bill.

Simultaneously the opposition has increased. It is now taking the form of individual protest by physicians themselves. In New Jersey some 200 doctors have signed a resolution asserting their refusal to take part in the King-Anderson plan, even if adopted, while promising to “continue to care for the medically indigent, young and old, as we have in the past.” The protest movement has spread rapidly to California, Texas, New York, Illinois, Louisiana, and North Carolina.