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Many a thoughtful U. S. physician opposes socialized medicine because, like a businessman, he dislikes the idea of government interference and fears the influence of politics. Nevertheless, in the past century every civilized government in the world has enormously increased its aid to the ill. And a strong current in favor of socialized medicine runs through recent writings of physicians on both sides of the Atlantic. Last week a Gallup poll on voluntary health insurance indicated that some 25,000,000 persons largely in the group earning over $980 a year would be willing to pay $3 a month for complete medical and hospital care. Only representative poll taken among doctors was last year when Modern Medicine asked its readership whether they favored use of public funds to provide medical care for low income groups. Over 16,000 doctor-readers replied of whom 54% said yes.
No medical politician, Dr. Sigerist has never plunged into the bitter medical battles that rage in Chicago and Washington. But as a No. 1 Medical Historian who is convinced that history spirals toward socialization, Henry Sigerist has a big intellectual influence at this time when the U. S. Government is taking socialized medicine seriously.
Washington Plans. No Administration has taken so deep an interest in medical legislation as Franklin Roosevelt's. Under the Social Security Act of 1935 Congress authorized annual expenditures of $3,800,000 for maternal and child health, $8,000,000 for grants to State health departments, $3,000,000 for the blind. In 1937, it appropriated $1,500,000 for cancer, in 1938, $3,000,000 for venereal disease.
This week, as evidence of the Federal Government's increasing sense of its public health obligations, the President told Congress: "[We do] not propose a great expansion of Federal health services, [but recommend] that plans be worked out and administered by States and localities with the assistance of Federal grants-in-aid. The aim is a flexible program ... a sound investment which can be expected to wipe out, in the long run, certain costs now borne in the form of relief."
Legislator most interested in Medical legislation is New York's Senator Robert Ferdinand Wagner, and this week he was dressing up a health bill which will closely follow7 the liberal recommendations of the President's Technical Committee on Medical Care. The Senator will ask for Government grants to States an 1 the U. S. Public Health Service amounting to $50,000,000 for 1939. The recommendations include extension of public health services, expansion of hospital facilities, medical care for reliefers and the "medically needy" (those whose low incomes make payment of doctor bills a hardship), workers' compensation for loss of wages through illness.
The not so liberal American Medical Association (110,000 of the 170,000 U. S. doctors) has approved these recommendations, but objects to the further suggestion that all medical service in the U. S. be organized on a taxation or insurance basis. To A. M. A. leadership, this proposal smacks of socialized medicine. As the bill headed toward the floors of Congress, A. M. A. Leaders Irvin Abell and Olin West rushed to Washington to repeat their objections to President Roosevelt.