politicalized medicine as the mammoth pot of gold at the end of the will be an illusion, they will find government dictating how they co business. ASSUMPTIONS OF BIG BUSINESS LEADERS IN FAVOR OF COMPULSORY POLITICALIZED MEDICINE Compulsory politicalized medicine (more familiarly though falsely known as National Health Insurance) will relieve businesses and corporations of the increasingly heavy burden of paying all or the lion's share of heatlh insurance premiums. The tax burden will not be as heavy as health insurance premiums because the tax for government health care will be spread all across the economy. Medicine, even if it is a profession, shouldn't be immune from the bureaucratic controls and regulations that business has suffered under more and more in recent years. Those business leaders whose companies have been enjoying lush federal government contracts tend to flirt with endorsement of compulsory politicalized medicine either through fear of bureaucrats who manipulate these contracts or because they can no longer see anything wrong with the controls that go along with being bankrolled by government. This is indeed a dangerous game-helping government use its power to plunder the people, with no thought of the consequences to the plundered, that is, the taxpayer and inflation payer. In this respect, such business leaders are no different than labor leaders who are gouging the public (including their own union members) with total indifference to the damage they do to the economic system and to the rights of individuals. Thoughtful citizens recognize, incidentally, that union membership constitutes only 25 per cent of the labor force and that a huge amount of business is carried on by small businesses outside the direct control of the big corporations that are unionized and have adopted the policy of capitulation to the bureaucracy-go along to get along. ASSUMPTIONS OF SOME MEDICAL ORGANIZATIONS FAVORING GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION Compulsory politicalized medicine is inevitable. If doctors go along, they will be able to control a government system. The name of the game is money and medical societies may as well get their share. Government subsidy doesn't necessarily mean government control. Since socialized medicine is inevitable, medicine needs to push its own proposal to preserve as much freedom as possible. These assumptions and attitudes on the part of the AMA and a number of constituent state medical societies do not represent either the beliefs or the desires of all medical organizations. Most notably, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons emphatically does not believe medicine can get along by going along; it does believe government subsidy is government control and it is sheer naivete to believe doctors will be able to control any part of any scheme of government medicine; it does believe that acceptance of federal money by medical organizations is a violation of ethics and a sellout of the profession as well as the American people. The statement that socialized medicine is inevitable is a cop out, a rationalization, an excuse to justify capitulation to get federal money. The AAPS does not buy that inevitability argument. The APPS has a case pending in the United States Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of a law passed by Congress in 1972, popularly known as PSRO, which gives the Secretary of HEW and the bureaucrats authority to substitute their judgment for the judgment of the attending physician on what is medically necessary and appropriate for a patient. We will not drop this case regardless of who proposes not to put it into operation. The law is bad and we shall do whatever we legally can to see that it is abolished. Some medical organizations, particularly those who have attorneys who are simultaneously attorneys for the hospital association, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, and the state licensing board, do not want to do anything to rock the boat so they counsel to go along with nationalized medicine-never admitting that they are profiting by the deal. Obviously, these assumptions by these various groups who are pushing for compulsory politicalized medicine do not in any way prove that their schemes will make more and better medical care available to everyone at less cost. None of these groups is sufficiently concerned about the cost, although the dollar cost alone should be sufficient to keep any responsible person from favoring compulsory politicalized medicine. What are the costs? Every bit of information available from foreign countries where politicalized medicine has been imposed and in this country show that the costs are unconscionable. The most objective study that has been done on the costs in foreign countries is contained in the book Medicine and the State by Lynch and Raphael. This Association is publishing and distributing this book and copies will be made available to the Committee upon request. The records of the federal government are clear that the schemes of political medicine in this country have been so costly that to apply them to all the citizenry would be the most irresponsible fiscal act that any legislator could perform. What are the facts? We have ten years of experience with Medicare and Medicaid which clearly shows that if such programs are applied to all the people not only will New York be bankrupt but the entire country will be bankrupt. If you are concerned about the effect of the financial collapse of New York City, which is the result of plunder by politicians and labor leaders, then you had better be a hundred times more concerned about what total compulsory politicalized medicine will do to free institutions in this country. Before Medicare was made law in 1965, the actuaries and the Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, based on stacks of statistics, solemnly assured the Congress and the public that their estimates were "conservative" and "safe" and that the first year of Medicare hospitalization alone for everyone over 65 years of age would only cost $900 million. (See testimony of HEW Sec. Abraham Ribicoff, July 24, 1961.) The truth is that it cost $2.7 billion-three times what the bureaucrats said it would cost. Congressman Bruce Alger of Texas and spokesmen for doctors in the practice of private medicine tried to get the Congress and the public to understand through hearings before the House Ways and Means Committee that the HEW estimates were completely untrue. This advice was ignored and unconscionable plunder resulted. Not only did the bureaucrats say that hospitalization alone would cost only $900 million the first year, but they said after the fifth year it would only cost $1.4 billion a year and after the tenth year $1.7 billion. The truth is that the fifth year it actually cost $5.6 billion, which is four times as much as estimated. The tenth year cost is now over ten times as much as the politicians promised. We are told now that the Kennedy-Corman bill, which is intended to force on the nation complete compulsory political medicine for everyone from sperm to worm, will cost only $129 billion. (See testimony on HEW Sec. Caspar Weinberger, July 1974.) Assuming that the HEW bureaucrats' estimate of costs are equally as inaccurate as their Medicare estimates have proven to be, then the cost would not be $129 billion for the first year but three times that much, more nearly $387 billion; and the tenth year ten times as much. Bear in mind the fact government with all of its wild, irresponsible, reckless fiscal policies is spending only about $300 billion. If this program is put into effect, it would be spending the first year $387 billion for medical care alone. These billions are so horrible, unthinkable and overwhelming that only bureaucrats and politicians who are used to dealing in billions can remotely conceive of what is being done. However, this Committee should know, as should the public, that presently 48% of everything everybody earns in this country is now being taken and spent by government. In the case of medicine, according to a Bulletin of the Social Security Administration, $197 is being privately spent for every person and $297 is being spent for every person by government. The combined per capita expenditure for medicine is, therefore, $492 at present. Under the Kennedy-Corman bill, HEW estimates per capita expenditures would be $600 the first year. However, if allowance is made for the fact that HEW bureaucrats never have estimated the cost of any program as high as it has actually turned out to be and we apply the same inaccurate understatement of the HEW bureaucrats on Medicare to the Kennedy-Corman bill, the first year cost per person of that program would be $1,784 and the tenth year cost would be $3,154 per person. In order to get this into focus for a family of four, consider these facts: the present combined cost of medical care taking into account governmental and private expenditures, is $1,968. HEW estimates that under the Kennedy-Corman bill it would be increased to $2,400, but again applying the Medicare inaccuracies it would turn out to be $7,136 the first year, and $12,616 the tenth year. Consider these horrible figures with the fact that according to the Survey of Current Business of the United States Department of Commerce for April, 1975, the average annual earnings per workers was only $8,031. Harry Hopkins, of New Deal fame, is credited with the completely irresponsible and cynical political philosophy of "spend and spend, tax and tax, elect and elect." Other equally cynical and rapacious public figures have said "the voters won't shoot Santa Claus." We suggest that the curtain ringing down on the bankruptcy of New York City is a dire warning to every United States government elected or appointed official that the federal government can collapse if it too continues its reckless spending. Total compulsory politicalized medicine in the United States means destruction of our system. However, if we are smart we will prove that Lenin was wrong as far as this country is concerned when he laid out his Machiavellian plan for destroying a private capitalist system. John Maynard Keynes, in 1919, in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace beginning on page 235, commented about Lenin's plan for destroying private capitalism. Although John Maynard Keynes' disciples have helped get us into the tragic financial plight of the present day, he understood what Lenin was up to. He said: "Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." It can be that the electorate in 1976 will prove to be smarter than the politicians who think that all they have to do is expropriate the income of all this country's citizens. Attached are charts showing how inflation and government spending is running amuck and why this plunder must stop if this country is not to be destroyed by false leaders, some of whom have to have someone else take their college examinations for them. Also attached are the ridiculous, erroneous, misleading statements by Secretary Ribicoff made in 1961 which in effect amount to fraud-statements made before the House Ways and Means Committee on H.R. 4222, the King-Anderson bill providing for health benefits in hospitals and other facilities. This occurred when Mr. Ribicoff was trying to deceive the American people to accept and the Congress to pass the King-Anderson bill, which, in 1965, with many expensive "goodies" added to it, became the Medicare-Mecicaid Law. That Law is now helping to bankrupt the federal and state governments by costing $28.7 billion in 1976, which is over fifteen times more than the top estimates originally promised. (See attached Appendix III re current Medicare-Medicaid costs.) Congress, considering legislation to nationalize medicine, is about to repeat the mistake it made in 1965 when it passed the Medicare-Medicaid Law on the basis of misrepresentations and falsehoods by the federal bureaucracy. - "This chart shows that the inflation index has risen over three times since 1945 from 48 to 156. Though this thermometer reading of the body politic may not be fully understood by all, the next chart brings into sharp focus the 'long view of legalized thievery' that has been going on since 1940." - AAPS testimony to House Ways & Means Committee Subcommittee on Health, 11-5-75 "This chart shows that the value of the dollar has shrunk from a 1940 value of $1.01 to 24c in 1974. This means to the elderly and disabled that from every $1.01 saved in 1940, 3/4 of the value of these savings has been stolen by inflation." AAPS testimony to House Ways & Means Committee Subcommittee on Health, 11-5-75 |