Which Weapon?

Last fall Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing dropped a bombshell: a program of compulsory health insurance which he recommended to President Truman. Ever since, the big brass of the American Medical Association have been spluttering with indignation. Determined to fight compulsory health insurance tooth & nail, the A.M.A. has also turned its back on such individually financed measures as the voluntary health insurance plan offered by the Blue Cross-Blue Shield Commissions (TIME, Dec. 13). In its fighting mood, the A.M.A. has even levied a $25 assessment on each of its 140,000 members. The $3,500,000 is to be used in an "education" campaign to tell the U.S. about the advantages of the "American system" of medical care (i.e., the status quo) as against Blue Cross-Blue Shield or Oscar Ewing's plan.

Last week at a meeting in Chicago of 250 of its leaders, the A.M.A. finally swung into action. Hired to run the new education campaign was Clem Whitaker, a stem-winding San Francisco public relations man. An old hand at fighting government-in-medicine (with his pert partner-wife, Leone Baxter, he led the successful California fight against Governor Earl Warren's compulsory insurance plan in 1945), Clem said what the medical brass wanted to hear: "The doctors of this country are in the front lines today [of] a basic struggle between ... socialism and private initiative . . . Oscar Ewing, that great patent-medicine man . . . apparently is grimly determined to bring socialized medicine from sick Europe to healthy America."

But Clem also knew that an education campaign would not be enough. His experience in California had taught him that voluntary health insurance is the doctors' best weapon against compulsory, Government-regulated plans. Said he: "We want everybody in the health insurance field selling insurance during the next two years as he never sold it before ... If we can get ten million more people insured in the next year and ten million more the next year, the threat of socialized medicine in this country will be over."

Such talk apparently made sense to many of the A.M.A.'s rank & file. While last week's meeting was in session, 136 leading U.S. doctors, all opponents of socialized medicine, sent a petition to A.M.A. Spokesman Dr. Morris Fishbein, criticizing the association's "indefinite and ... inadequate program." Under the combined assault, the A.M.A. brass gave way. This week they announced a twelve-point plan. Main points: 1) creation of a federal Department of Health, headed by a doctor who will be a Cabinet member, 2) increased medical research through a national science foundation, 3) more voluntary health insurance, 4) federal aid for medical education and hospitals.

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