LA SALLE, ILL., March 19, 1946. Senator JAMES E. MURRAY, Chairman, Senate Committee on Education and Labor, Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: At the regular meeting of Central Trades and Labor Council, representing over 35 organizations and well over 5,000 workers in this area, we went on record favoring the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill, S. 1606 and urge you grant as many requests as possible to supporters of this bill to be heard at your hearings. Thanking you in advance and urging your support for this bill I am Yours truly, GEORGE R. FRITZ, Secretary, Central Trades and Labor Council. CITIZENS POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE, Senator JAMES E. MURRAY, Senate Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: As chairman of the committee holding hearings on the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill, we wish you to know that the National Health Act has the complete backing of the community organizations of the New York Citizens Political Action Committee. It is of vital importance that this bill be passed. We hope you will continue the hearings until all necessary information pertinent to this bill is obtained. Social security has been successful since its inception in giving security to a certain portion of the people, but this security should be extended not only to a greater number of people but in increased benefits as well. The inclusion of health protection is necessary and should not be deleted. We are wholeheartedly for bill S. 1050 and feel that you will do all in your power to insure its acceptance. Sincerely, J. R. WALSH, CITIZENS' PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE. CHAIRMAN, SENATE LABOR AND EDUCATION COMMITTEE, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: The Citizens' Public Affairs Committee, numbering more than 600 alert and civic-minded citizens who are vitally interested in the general welfare as a prerequisite to national well-being and prosperity, takes this means of requesting that this organization be recorded as favoring the Wagner-Dingell Murray bill as a broad national health and social security measure. We respectfully urge that thoughtful consideration be given our imperative health needs and that this bill be reported upon favorably. We are convinced that a national measure of the scope and purpose of the Wagner-Dingell-Murray bill is imperatively demanded to spread the costs of adequate medical care more equitably, and to bring the impressive achievements of medical science to the aid of low-income groups now suffering needlessly from a continuous draia upon their potential economic resources. Improved national health is a selfliquidating investment. Respectfully yours, HARRISON L. HARLEY, Chairman. CONNECTICUT INDEPENDENT CITIZENS' COMMITTEE The Honorable JAMES E. MURRAY, Chairman, Senate Education and Labor Committee, Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: The Connecticut Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions believe that prevailing methods for the dis tribution of medical care do not serve their purposes effectively. The vast majority of our people are victims of substandard hospital facilities and health care. The report of the Subcommittee on Wartime Health and Education proves the unquestioned need to organize medical services to bring the advances of medical services to the public. We believe this can be developed around the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill, which applies the principles of compulsory insurance and taxation to the problem of meeting the cost of medical care, and can bring such services to the people. Through grants in aid to the States it offers care for the needy sick together with expansion of public health services and the Maternal and Child Health program. It also provides for the support of medical education and research which are vital to scientific advancement. To complete the President's program provisions for rehabilitation, for increased unemployment insurance, and for liberalizing old age and survivors' benefits by amendment of the Social Security act are essential. We therefore urge that after the hearings on the bill now in progress in the Senate the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill be brought to the floor of the Senate and we shall urge our Senators to vote for it. Very truly yours, (Mrs.) CHARLOTTE H. PETERS, Secretary. BOWLING GREEN, OHIO, March 18, 1946. Senator JAMES E. MURRAY. DEAR HONORABLE SIR: I am secretary of the Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union of America, Bowling Green Local 22, which now has a roll call of 72 voting members. At our meeting held March 8, 1946 a resolution was passed unanimously that I should write to you concerning some health legislation pending in Congress at the present time. We urge you as chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor to hold hearings on both bills-the Maternal and Child Welfare Act of 1945, S. 1318 and the National Health Act of 1945, S. 1606, at the same time. We are emphatically in favor of both these bills. No one can measure the good to the entire Nation which will be derived from such sorely needed legislation. We wish to thank you for anything you may be able to do in the way of securing the passage of these bills. Sincerely, Mrs. JOHN J. STEIN, Secretary of the Bowling Green Local 22 of the Farmers Union. THE GIRLS' FRIENDLY SOCIETY, U. S. A., Senator JAMES E. MURRAY, Chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor, Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: The, executive committee of the Girls' Friendly Society, U. S. A., has endorsed S. 1318, the Maternal and Child Welfare Act of 1945, for the following reasons: 1. As a church organization, concerned with children and young people, we recognize health as a fundamental asset for character development. 2. From our experience, we realize how many mothers and children are denied this because of the lack of adequate services and facilities. 3. In a democratic country, we believe the Government should assume as its responsibility making such services available to all mothers and children. We urge that the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, in its hearings on S. 1606, give consideration to these points and report the bill favorably. We also urge that title I, section B of this bill (S. 1606), be strengthened by the inclusion of the more specific provisions in regard to services and facilities, services to crippled children, and standards for professional personnel, as provided in S. 1318. Sincerely yours, FRANCES P. ARNOLD, THE MEDICAL SOCIETY OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA, The Honorable JAMES E. MURRAY, Chairman, Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: The six doctors of medicine proposed by the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania (9,500 members) as witnesses to appear before your committee during the current hearings on S. 1606 unite in submitting for your com mittee's consideration the following comments and observations based on years of study and practical experience in the distribution of medical care and the equitable division of its costs. We consider title I of S. 1606 superfluous since S. 191, as it has recently passed the Senate, provides admirably for the building of hospitals and public health centers where needed. It has the approval of the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association. The provision of other needed facilities and of personnel may readily be accomplished when the Congress is ready to appropriate sufficient funds to expand the public health work under existing title VI of the Social Security Act. The same is to be said of the maternal and child health and crippled children's services under title V of the Social Security Act. An amendment to the original Social Security Act providing for grants-in-aid to States for their public-assistance recipients, when proven necessary, would provide for this section of title I of S. 1606. Adequate Federal subsidization of medical education will be provided for in the pending Magnuson bill creating a national science foundation, which bill has the support of the organized medical profession and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Title II of S. 1606 provides for prepaid personal health services. Inasmuch as title I is not necessary, the section providing for cooperation with the Children's Bureau in title II becomes unnecessary. (See sec. 203 (d) of S. 1606.) On behalf of the 9,500 members of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, a constituent of the American Medical Association, we write herewith in opposition to compulsory health insurance, whether it be known as federalized medicine, socialized medicine, political medicine, regimented medical service, or any other term which is popularly used in reference to governmental control over the delivery of individualized medical services, as proposed in title II of S. 1606. We oppose it for the following specific reasons: 1. In the provisions of S. 1606, there is no guaranty that the patient will have absolute free choice of physician under all conditions. While there ase some alluring statements in the bill regarding free choice of physician, yet these state ments are definitely limited by other statements in the bill. (See sec. 26 (e), (k).) 2. In spite of all the statements in the bill regarding attempted means to improve medical services the ultimate result will be a deterioration in the quality of medical services rendered. This has followed the introduction of such gover mental plans throughout the world. 3. The centralized control of individual medical service as provided for in this bill will irresistibly develop its great part in the totalitarian trend which, unless halted soon, will eventually and inevitably destroy our democratic form of government. 4. There is no specific mention in the bill of the cost of the program or of the raising of the revenue to provide for these services. Yet, if enacted, its heavy cost must be met-doubtless by a pay-roll deduction plan supplemented by direct taxation. It seems rather strange to propose such all-inclusive and comprehensive services without indicating how they will be underwritten or proffering an estimate of its total cost. Those of us who have had experience in the administration of voluntary prepaid medical care plans know that the amount indicated in S. 1050-8 per cent of the Nation's payrolls-will not be sufficient, and we publicly express the opinion that it will cost the people of the United States anywhere from $10,000,000,000 to $14,000,000,000 annually to attempt delivery of the proposals of this bill. Wherever introduced, utilization of the service, much of it wasteful due to malingering, has rapidly increased administrative and professional costs to three or four times that originally anticipated. 1 5. From the statements in S. 1606 (see sec. 210 (a), (e)) that the patient may be charged a fee for the first services in any spell of sickness or course of treatment, or that the service may be limited, it is evident that the originators' knowledge as to the costs of this colossal program is very limited. It has been the experience in Pennsylvania and many other States that unless blueprints made in Washington, D. C., for the maternal and child health, crippled childrens', and public health services as provided for in the original Social Security Act are adhered to in minute detail by the local State agency, the promised Federal funds are withheld. This same procedure will apply in the program authorized by title II of S. 1606. The Surgeon General will make the blueprints as to fees, rules, regulations, and interpretations of the laws, pass them down through the State bureaus and community committees, and enforce his decisions by withholding the funds. "Whoever pays the fiddler calls the tune" will again prove a truism should S. 1006 be enacted. 7. In Pennsylvania we have had for 7 years one of the best tax-supported medical-care programs in the United States for the medical care of the indigent. This program is administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Public Assistance and by an active State Healing Arts Advisory Committee which represents the State organizations of medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, and the hospitals. There are similar advisory committees in each county. In Pennsylvania the medical society is cooperating with the Farm Security Administration in a program of procedure with farm, groups for rural health activities, and more recently with the Veterans' Adininistration and the State rehabilitation service for those unemployed because of physical disability. For the low-and average-income groups we have a voluntary insured medical care program, the Medical Service Association of Pennsylvania. All of these activities can be expanded and under the Pennsylvania law creating the medical service association we can provide on a voluntary and democratic basis any type of service that is proposed by the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill. In conslusion, we point with pride to the part played by our profession in the reduction throughout the years in human morbidity and mortality, and promise progress througn further scientific experimentation and voluntary cooperation between (1) those who practice the healing arts (2) Governmental agencies, and (3) the people both serve. If not interfered with by centralized Governmental bureaucratic control with its red tape and all other objectionable features, we will be able by democratic processes to supply all that is necessary for the people in the way of health service, hospital service and medical care. Respectfully submitted. United States Senate, Washington, D. C. Dear SENATOR MURRAY: We have received a letter in response to our request to be heard on the National Health Act (S. 1606) in which it is stated that President Green, of the American Federation of Labor, will give testimony on behalf of all affiliated American Federation of Labor organizations. We are pleased that your committee is going to hear the testimony of President Green and we appreciate the inability of your committee to hear the many witnesses who undoubtedly would like to give testimony favoring this measure. 85907-46-pt. 1-35 However, we want your committee to know that the Minnesota State Federation of Labor has been on record for this type of legislation for some time. Experi ence in Minnesota has demonstrated that the present methods of handling health matters are inadequate to take care of the needs of individuals in the lower income brackets. Even during so-called periods of high wages such as we are experiencing now, the average wage earner with a family to support is entirely unable to meet emergency medical costs, and expenses when they occur. We are convinced that the only solution to the problem is the establishment of a Nation-wide system of prepaid health service benefits of the kind provided for in S. 1606. As indicated, this matter has been considered by this federation for some time. We are enclosing for your further information a resolution passed at our 1944 convention at St. Cloud, Minn., in September 1944. This action was reaffirmed by the 1945 convention. Trusting that your committee will act favorably on S. 1606 we are, Very truly yours, MINNESOTA STATE FEDERATION OF LABOR, RESOLUTION Whereas figures showing that to date over 4,000,000 men have been rejected from the armed services as unfit for military service, 8 of 10 of whom have at least one physical defect, indicate a lowering of the national health standards; and Whereas further proof of the decline of our national health may be found in testimony given before a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor calling attention to the fact that there are 23,500,000 Americans with chronic diseases or physical impairments, thousands of which could be cured even if minimum standards of health were set up; and Whereas this condition was attributed mainly to the absence of adequate hospital and medical services a relationship was traced between low incomes and poor health, substantiating the belief that the average workingman is financially unable to meet the added burden of sickness or hospitalization: and Whereas Dr. Parran, Surgeon General of the United States Public Heath Service, confirms the fact that a third of the American people are handicapped by ailments that might have been prevented in the first place and which end now be corrected by proper health policies, and calls for the encouragement of group medical practice and more rather than less "socialization" of medicite: and Whereas there is before the Senate Committee on Finance S. 1161, more em monly known as the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill, which sets up a system of Federal medical and hospitalization benefits which would encourage the raising of national health standards by not only providing for beneficiaries in case of illness or hospitalization but by indulging in preventive medicine to such an extent that many diseases and impairments might be eliminated: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Minnesota State Federation of Labor in convention assem bled at St. Cloud, Minn., September 19, 1944, does go on record as favoring the enactment at the earliest possible moment of the health and medical and dental care provisions contained in the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill, S. 1161, and e Is for its immediate enactment into law, properly amended to make its benefits available to Government employees as well as those in private industry; and be it further Resolved, That the delegates to the national convention of the American Fed eration of Labor be instructed to present a similar resolution at that convention, that our representatives in Congress be furnished with copies of this resolution and urged to support this legislation and that the national officers of the American Federation of Labor be advised of this action and asked to use their efforts toward obtaining prompt action on the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill. |