Mr. ANDERSON. One relates to this fundamental question of whether we give up some of our rights of independence when we enter into a system like that, and I think we hear of at least, I have seen in recent material-the threat of regimentation and political medicine. Well, it seems to me that to see that if the greatest good for 130.000.000 people in this country is to be achieved in some areas, we need a little regimentation.

For example, I own a car, and I pay for a license. I also pay taxes. and buy gas, to have roads built by the Government, and I ask the Government and I want the Government to build those roads. Because I am free an independent I would like to ride on those roads the way I want to, but the Government tells me I cannot, that I ride on the right-hand side, when I come to a stop light and it is red I have to stop, that there are certain places I cannot park, that there are speed limits. That is regimentation, but I accept that.

Senator DONNELL. I take it you recognize that that is an illustration of a police regulation that has proved essential? You appreciate that fact?

Mr. ANDERSON. But it is something a little bit more than a police regulation. It seems to me that it is an agreement that we as a people have agreed to as good for us. The kind of regimentation I object to is where one person says, "This is what all the people are going to do." But where we in a democracy make a decision as to how we want to do a certain thing, and when it goes through the processes of coming up to Congress and having hearings of this kind, where people have to see about things, then when a decision is reached I accept it as the will of the people.

Senator DONNELL. May I interrupt you to ask you, Mr. Anderso do you favor the granting to the Surgeon General of the power coferred by section 205 (j)?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes. I know what that is.

Senator DONNELL. To prescribe maximum limits to the number of potential beneficiaries for whom a practitioner may undertake gen eral medical or general dental benefit.

Mr. ANDERSON. My answer is that unless Congress can figure ou a better way of getting the job done I would be willing to give that a try. I do not accept this as perfect legislation, and I am sure ther will be many imperfections in the first few years of administration, but we have got to make a start, and this is a start. I think we ca work out some of the administrative details. In public administra tion there is a debate as to whether you should have a board. In we'fare we have come up with that frequently, the question of whether there should be a board or whether the Governor should appoint on man. Then there are people to present evidence for both sides.

Now, to me at this moment that is not terribly important. I would say that if Congress, after these hearings, decides that that is a good way of putting this plan into effect, then I think we ought to do it and see what the experience is.

If you feel that there is a better way, that there ought to be a loca board of some kind to make these rules, that is all right, too.

I feel that there should be several safeguards, and as I read this b I think those safeguards are there, and that the money that is gotten ir is collected in what I think is a very efficient and economic way. There are safeguards as to how that money should be spent.

Senator DONNELL. Pardon me just a minute. Is there anything in S. 1606 which refers to how the money is to be collected?

Mr. ANDERSON. I am sorry. I am still thinking of S. 1050. I might say, we have not taken a stand on whether it should be insurance or straight taxation; and if you fix either way it can be done. I am sorry; you are right, there is nothing in here on that.

Senator DONNELL. Very well. Is there anything further, Mr. Anderson?

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, let me end up by saying that I think that at the present time we ought to do everything that we can to mobilize for production. And I think that to get full production in this country we need to make the kind of conditions which will make for mobility both on the part of management and our labor force.

It is for that reason that I think questions like these must have national consideration and national leadership and some system whereby we have federal and state and local government participation. It is for that reason that I would oppose having some plan set up on a State-by-State basis, because I believe that to achieve prosperity and full production we ought to provide these social protections and services in such a way that it would permit mobility, and today that means helping all of us exercise this right of independence and free choice of a job, and does not make for the regimentation or the fear of not getting services and the fear of moving from one place to another.

Senator DONNELL. The committee, I can assure you, is very grateful to you, Mr. Anderson, for your thoughtful and courteous presentation to it.

The next witness is Mr. McMichael, is it not, Rev. Mr. McMichael. Now, Reverend Mr. McMichael, do you have a prepared statement? Reverend Mr. McMICHAEL. Yes.

STATEMENT OF REV. JACK R. McMICHAEL, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, METHODIST FEDERATION FOR SOCIAL SERVICE

Senator DONNELL. If you will be kind enough, before giving your testimony, please identify yourself, your education and background, and your professional experience, and then describe the organization for which you appear.

Rev. Mr. McMICHAEL. Surely.

My name is Jack R. McMichael, and I am now the executive secretary of the Methodist Federation for Social Service.

You asked about my professional experience. Before that, I was a chaplain of the United States Maritime Service, some two years or over. Prior to that, I was a pastor of the Court Street Methodist Church, Alameda, Calif.

I graduated from Emory University, Georgia, where I received an A. B. degree; the Union Theological Seminary, New York, where I received a B. D., which is a bachelor of divinity postgraduate degree; and from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, what is called an S. T. M., master of sacred theology.

Senator DONNELL. What is your present address?

Rev. Mr. McMICHAEL. My present address is 150 Fifth Avenue, headquarters in New York City.

Senator DONNELL. Thank you.

THE METHODIST FEDERATION FOR SOCIAL SERVICE

Rev. MCMICHAEL. It is with real pleasure, Mr. Chairman, that I accept this opportunity to present to this committee the attitude of the Methodist Federation for Social Service on this important measure. S. 1606.

The Methodist Federation for Social Service has been in existence since 1907 and is the group out of which grew the original draft of the well-known Social Creed of the Methodist Church, which became i: substance the Social Creed of the Churches as adopted by the Federa Council of the Churches of Christ in America.

The organization has the moral blessing and backing of the Genera Conference of the Methodist Church. It seeks to apply the ethical imperatives of the Biblical gospel to the social relationships of me. and women in our modern world.

It seeks, in other words, to help to build that more brotherly and truly democratic world towards which the ethic of Jesus impels us. It devotes itself, therefore, primarly to social education and action.

Its president is Bishop Lewis O. Hartman, president of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. Its vice presidents are Bishop Jame C. Baker, president of the International Missionary Council, and Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, president of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. Its recording secretary is Miss Thelma Stevens, of Mississippi, who directs the Christian social Relations department of the Womens' Society of Christian Service of the Methodist Church, and its treasurer is Dr. Gilbert Q. LeSourd, treas urer, business division, of the Missionary Education Movement.

Our organization has long been dedicated to the realization of a program in America which would actually provide adequate medica. care for all. From the beginning, it has given earnest support to the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill as a great step in the direction of the idea. of universal and adequate medical care.

The members of the Methodist Federation for Social Service may be counted among those who are "doers of the word and not hearers only." Our federation members can be relied upon to back up the congressional supporters of this bill, not only in sentiment, but in individual and corporate action.

COMPARISON TO CRUSADE FOR FREE EDUCATION

The significant struggle today to make adequate medical care unive?sally available to the people of this land reminds one of the histori battle in America in earlier days for free and universal education. It was once regarded as very radical indeed to advocate a system of urversal and free education in this country. We now see such a system as an essential and inextricable root of our cherished American dem racy. So in the future it will be with universal and freely availab medical care.

We are confident that the day is not distant when medical care wi!. be universally available, and when it will be as inevitably a part of a democratic America, even, as we all have now come to regard universa. and free education.

It is quite true that there are always difficulties in bringing abo great and significant social changes. Jesus, with his keen psychologi

cal insight, saw this quite well. Jesus said that "No man having drunk old wine desireth new: for he sayeth, "The old is good.""

Jesus had spoken of his own task as that of introducing new wine: that is, new attitudes and new ways of doing things. He fully understood and announced that he would meet opposition for his daring to propose changes.

So it is today that we have those who are so accustomed to the old ways of dispensing medical care that they are congenitally opposed to proposals for needed change and improvement.

PUBLIC OPINION POLLS

This does not, however, apply to the great majority of the American people. Many public-opinion polls have shown that the American people, by a large majority, support fundamental changes in this area, and are deeply dissatisfied with the present situation as concerns the availability of medical care.

This is even shown by the poll conducted for the National Physicians' Committee, which is so hostile to this bill. Nor is it by any means an altogether novel idea that the Federal Government should cooperate in a program to provide universal medical care.

As a chaplain in the recent war, I paid many visits to the marine hospital in San Francisco, where merchant seamen for a long time have been granted complete and free medical care and hospitalization. It is unthinkable that this splendid system of universal medical care could ever be abolished now that it has become so much a part of the world in which American merchant seamen live. It has been interesting to me to learn that such a system of universal and complete care for merchant seamen now administered by the United States Public Health Service and supported by social insurance and tax funds has been in effect in America since 1798.

FREEDOM FROM DISEASE

A goal of universal medical care has deep roots in our biblical religious heritage. It is in keeping with that heritage that we worship a God described in the New Testament as "No respecter of persons" and as a loving Father whose will it is that not one of the least of the people should perish.

It was in line with this universal concern of our religious heritage that our own Thomas Jefferson wrote into the original charter of our Nation the declaration that all men were intended by God to enjoy life and the pursuit of happiness through equality of opportunity.

Certainly this must include opportunity equitably distributed to be born properly and to enjoy needed medical care.

Only a few months have passed since the close of the most costly war in mankind's history. Millions of people during that war were inspired by the promise of freedom from want. Certainly such a slogan can only be adequately interpreted as including freedom from disease.

It is not surprising, therefore, that we seen in many democratic lands today a determination that all of the people shall in the days ahead be enabled to receive needed medical care. We see this in England today.

Some years ago, in the early stages of Japan's wanton aggression upon China, I found this widespread determination among the Chinese people to develop in their land a true democracy which would include within its basic structure a program of universally available medical and hospital care.

The eyes of the world are on the United States. Even as we led the world in providing a system of universal education, so we are challenged today to give similar world leadership by developing within our Nation a system of adequate and universal medical care.

THE NEED FOR MEDICAL CARE

The widespread dissatisfaction in America with the situation as pertains to the availability of medical care and the unanimous support which has come from our organization's membership, for example, for the basic principles of this bill, are rooted in the serious and tragic facts.

It is simply and undeniably true that the medical needs of the American people are not today being met with anything like adequacy. The Selective Service figures are well known to the members of this committee. I think I need not remind you of what they are. As you know, the percentage of rejections was much higher in the South, from which I come.

Under our present system, those who need medical care most tend to get it the least, since those least able to pay are usually those most in need of that which they cannot afford.

The serious need for the distribution of doctors and medical facilities is well known to all members of this committee. The doctors have tended to establish themselves not on a basis of the extent of need for medical care, but on the basis of the extent of ability to pay for such care in the particular area where they establish themselves. Thus, the low-income areas have suffered.

We learn that in 1944, 553 counties had less than 1 doctor per 3,00 people, and that 81 counties had no functioning doctor at all. We learn, further, that 40 percent of the counties have no general hos pital, and that a similar proportion have no full-time public health officer.

Senator DONNELL. Pardon me just a minute.

Do you take the view that substantially every county, regardless of population, should have a hospital, or do you feel that the populatio of the county should enter into it?

Reverend McMICHAEL. I think the population should enter in. My view is, there are many counties that need them that do not have them Senator DONNELL. But when you state 40 percent of the counties have no hospital, you don't mean to imply that all those should have hospitals?

Reverend McMICHAEL. No; but a substantial proportion of them. Fifteen percent of all the counties, we are told, have no prenata: or well-bady clinics. These deprived counties tend to come from the low-income areas, the areas where the need for such facilities and clinics is greatest.

All of us are concerned about the children, who are the hope for the future of our Nation and world. We learn that 60 percent of the children in our country live in areas where only 4 percent of our