Alarming Symptoms

Socialized medicine--or anything that even looks or smells like socialized medicine--gives the American Medical Association chills & fever. Last week in St. Louis (see above) A.M.A. officials were running a temperature. Harry Truman, pledged to compulsory national health insurance, had unexpectedly won the election--with a Democratic Congress. What should A.M.A. do?"

First, A.M.A.'s policy-making House of Delegates turned down a proposal for a nonprofit national health insurance company. The plan was recommended by the Blue Cross-Blue Shield Commissions, headed by Dr. Paul Ramsey Hawley. The idea was to issue policies covering hospital and medical bills on a nationwide scale, which would allow big businesses to sign one contract covering all employees, no matter where they work. The plan would give more people better medical care, and thus probably lessen agitation for compulsory insurance. But A.M.A. said no: the whole thing looked like socialism, it called for too much centralization and too much interference with doctors by laymen.

Then A.M.A.'s rulers voted to assess each of its 140,000 members $25, the first such levy in the organization's 100 years. The $3,500,000 would be spent on a campaign of "education" to tell people the advantages of the "American system" of medical care. Federal Security Administrator Oscar R. Ewing says that the "education" will be A.M.A. "lobbying" against Government health insurance.

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