The social transformation of American medicine by Starr Paul 1949-

Author:Starr, Paul, 1949-
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Medical care, Social medicine, Physicians
Publisher: New York : Basic Books
Published: 1982-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

American over sixty-five a monthly pension of $200 on two conditions: that they retire from work and immediately spend the money. Though it was a fantastic and implausible scheme—if carried out, it would have turned over half the national income to 8 percent of the population 91 —Townsend clubs had sprung up all over the country. Many congressmen had been obliged to pledge themselves to work for its enactment and saw Social Security as an acceptable way to escape from a commitment they had no intention of fulfilling.

Even before Roosevelt took office, there was a steady movement toward Social Security. Two states passed old-age pension laws in 1929, two more in 1930, five in 1931. As governor of New York, Roosevelt endorsed unemployment insurance in 1930; Wisconsin became the first state to adopt such a measure early in 1932. Although old-age pension and unemployment insurance bills were introduced into Congress soon after his election, Roosevelt refused to give them his strong support, waiting to prepare a program of his own. Then on June 8, 1934, he seized the initiative and announced that he would appoint a Committee on Economic Security to study the issue comprehensively and report with a program to Congress the following January. The committee was to consist of four members of the Cabinet and the federal relief administrator; it would be chaired by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins.

Though Roosevelt indicated in his June message that he was especially interested in old-age and unemployment measures, the committee included medical care and health insurance in its research. Its subcommittee on medical care was chaired by Walton Hamilton and its technical study was directed by Edgar Sydenstricker, the two liberal dissenters from the CCMC majority report.

From the outset the prevailing sentiment on the Committee on Economic Security was that health insurance would have to wait. Edwin Witte, the staff director, recorded in a confidential memo in 1936 his "original belief that medical society opposition precluded any action on health insurance. This view was shared by Secretary Perkins. Harry Hopkins, the relief administrator, was "more interested in health insurance than in any other phase of social insurance, but also realized that this subject would have to be handled very gingerly." 92

Nor was this sentiment confined to members of the committee. In an article published in October of 1934, Abraham Epstein, the founder of the American Association for Social Security and a leading figure in the movement, advised the administration to be politically realistic and specifically to go slow on health insurance because of the opposition it would arouse—this from someone who later would become severely critical of the conservatism of the Social Security bill. 93

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.