Plan for the Aged

In the struggle between all-out proponents of federally financed health care for the aged and all-out opponents of any Government involvement, a third force emerged last week and offered a comprehensive middleway plan. Meeting in Chicago, the American Hospital Association and the Blue Cross Association voted to support a new, nonprofit plan to be available to all Americans over 65. Subscribers would pay all or part of their premiums ($10 to $12 a month) in proportion to their incomes, and the Federal Government would pay part or all of the premiums for low-income oldsters.

Recent debate (TIME, July 7) over medical care for the aged has raged over two plans:

sbThe Kerr-Mills Act, implemented (or soon to be) in 38 states, provides federal funds to help localities pay hospital and nursing bills for the aged who are already on relief, plus aid for those who are not indigent until their resources are wiped out by medical catastrophes. Beneficiaries are expected soon to number 2,500,000.

sbThe Kennedy Administration's King-Anderson bill, through a hike in payroll taxes, would pay most hospital costs for 14 million old people under social security or railroad retirement plans, but fails to provide for 2,000,000 not thus covered.

To devise a plan of their own, the American Hospital Association (representing 5,464 of the nation's 6.876 hospitals) and the Blue Cross Association (representing 79 plans covering 57 million people) set up a task force under Blue Cross's hard-driving new president, Walter J. McNerney, 36. Said McNerney, a specialist in medical economics fresh from the University of Michigan faculty: "We feel the Government should supplement and strengthen our existing hospital programs rather than supplant them."

About one-quarter of the 16 million Americans over 65 already have some hospital-cost coverage through commercial insurance, and another third have it through Blue Cross. But no two Blue Cross plans are alike in premiums or benefits. What McNerney proposed was, "for the first time in history, a uniform set of benefits on a nationwide basis," for all people over 65 regardless of their state of health. Main benefit would be as many as 70 days' hospitalization a year. As with most present Blue Cross plans, subscribers would get nothing toward doctors' bills.

To pay for this, said McNerney, individuals with enough money should pay their own premiums. But he believes that for those who cannot pay their own premiums, Government help is the only alternative. The A.H.A. and the Blue Cross still flatly oppose the King-Anderson bill.

Provided the plan is run as a nonprofit, voluntary, prepayment system, McNerney said, "the tax source of the funds is of secondary importance to us."

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