wonderful thing if we could have some kind of legislation. I know they think someone might get the benefit of that little $65 they get, but I think it is very sad that there is not a granny in a home. I go in some of the loveliest homes in Springfield, but there is never any granny there. They always are in some rest home or somewhere. The grandchildren, I think they would be a wonderful influence to their grandchildren, and I think we wouldn't have so much trouble with the delinquency of the younger. So many mothers work. There is no mother at home when they come home from school, and if there was a granny there, I think her counsel is very valuable. I wish that we could do something about that.

Senator LONG. Thank you, Mrs. Rose.

I remember when I was a boy my grandmother lived at home and those were very happy days, but I have heard a surprising amount of testimony the last month, Mrs. Rose, that many of the senior citizens want independence, don't want to live with their families any more. Whether the families want them to or not, they want the independence to live in their own home.

Mrs. Rose. My brother, Judge Wheeler in the county court, he has credited the Grand Acres and Sunshine Acres, but maybe in your investigation you found a lot are not very desirable.

Senator LONG. That possibly would be true. These two institutions there are homes, they are not institutions. They are very fine examples.

Dr. A. L. Henson.

STATEMENT OF DR. A. L. HENSON, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL OF SENIOR CITIZENS OF SPRINGFIELD

Dr. HENSON. Senator Long, Congressman Hall, and staff, I am Dr. A. L. Henson, president of the Council of Senior Citizens here of Springfield. We have over 140 paidup members. We meet each week at the recreation hall, which is furnished by the park board. We do appreciate all of the good things they have done for us. We meet each Friday for an all-day session. We have a sack lunch, business meeting, games of all kinds. We really do have a fine time. We enjoy it.

I find but little interest in Federal housing because many of our members own their homes, many of them are comfortably situated and wouldn't care to make a change. I find much more interest in the nursing homes because many of us expect sooner or later to have their services and so we would be interested in that.

There are several things that they are interested in. One is an increase in the allowable earnings beyond social security payments. Another is in the retention of their exemptions for Federal income tax, and to stop this wage-price spiral.

Personally I would like to see a balanced budget and less Federal paternalism and more of that spirit that made this great country. Senator LONG. Doctor, are you a member of the social security system? Dr. HENSON. No.

Senator LONG. And so the record may be clear, Doctor, what are you?

Dr. HENSON. I am a retired osteopathic physician.

Senator LONG. Thank you.

Are there any other individuals 65 years of age or over who desire to speak?

Here is a gentleman right here.

You may proceed, Mr. Lightfoot.

STATEMENT OF M. D. LIGHTFOOT

Mr. LIGHTFOOT. Senator Long and gentlemen, I am not here for the home, or for or against it, or anything else. I am here largely to speak a word for what I consider a large element in the United States, the forgotten citizen. There are three classes: One that can get into medical attention by Government help; one is a millionaire who can take care of it; and we middle class can't afford it; and we have to stay out largely. I am not going to give you anything hyperbole, I am just going to quote you three or four facts that's happened this year to give you an idea.

Last Christmas a wonderful lady that I knew, 87 years old, was scalded, she was sent to the hospital. She had enough income that she thought she could take care of herself the rest of her life. Later we succeeded in bringing her to Springfield to a skin specialist and she was out in 3 weeks. She was in the hospital two and a half days before that. Then about 4 months afterwards-87 years old-her hip gave way and she was sent to the hospital with a broken hip and two and a half days after that she was gone.

In that length of time, I want to give you this now, I am quoting from facts, in that length of time her hospital bill was $550. Her medical attention and supplies and medicines, $365; her physician, $535; her ambulance, $60.

I will tell you that I have talked with scores and scores and scores of old people of that category, so far as wealth is concerned, in the last 2 or 3 years and the principal thing that's in their mind is the uneasiness how they can be taken care of without going on charity or without begging from somebody else to do it. It has just got so they can't do it. The amount of attention-and listen, the physicians, with one exception, who handled this case were perfectly ethical. They are good friends of mine and everything of the kind, but it has just got to a point, Mr. Senator, where the average person in finance is uneasy all the time as he gets older. He knows that he will have to do one of two things. He will have to go on assistance, State or charity or something like that or he will have to die without the necessary attention that should be taking care of him. The financial part of it has just gotten entirely out of their hands. Now if you can solve that, you can solve the problem of a bigger segment of the older citizens of the United States than you can under anything else, because it is the great middle class that can't afford these things and yet hesitate about going on charity and so forth and so on. You can talk to me about insurance or anything of the kind, it don't cover it; it don't cover it; it don't cover it at all. This expense, she had plenty, but it was the uneasiness in her mind that she would have to go on possibly and couldn't take it to the end and she simply couldn't face the fact of maybe finally having to go on charity, and I think that that thing in her mind and in hundreds of minds of elder citizens of the United

States in the like category is a greater deterrent toward their getting well and a greater incentive to their dying, if you please, to any one thing you can do. About $85 a day was what that expense was and she had to go to her maker uneasy because her mind was uneasy about the point that she wouldn't have enough income. She had her home, she had her property, she had an income of a considerable amount, but it just ate it up so fast that it worried her until she just gave up and didn't want to go any further.

That's all I have to say. That's a problem you had better solve. Senator LONG. Thank you, Mr. Lightfoot. The problem you have indicated is the problem the committee has heard many times from many senior citizens. Your statement will be a part of the record and will be carefully considered by the committee and the staff. Now is there anyone else over 65? Here is a gentleman back here. Will you come forward, please?

STATEMENT OF CHARLES VAN AKEN

Mr. VAN AKEN. I don't know how much good this is going to do to talk because I know they can't hear at all in the back end. We can't hear you gentlemen at the bench up there halfway back. But there is a great deal to be done for the aged, the senior citizen, things that could be done, I think, without any trouble at all, and it would be a great benefit.

In the first place, we need a great shakeup in our caseworkers. Now, I am not on relief of that kind or anything, but there are a great many people that are and we need a shakeup.

Now, I have been a salesman in a store, in a furniture store, for a good many years here in town and it is a shame the way some of them have to buy. They can't have anything for their homes. Now, they are entitled to live the same as the younger generation are. The older generation is what has put America to what it is today, only the older generation didn't get the money. We had to save a nickel or a dime or a penny for a rainy day and prices and living has gone up so high that that nickel or dime that we saved is gone long ago.

for

Of course I am on social security, trying to live on social security. I just came from my doctor paying $8 out just a few minutes ago my wife and I.

I think that the United States has been keeping up other countries all other the world and building them up, why not do something for the people that have brought America to where it is today?

And another point is, I understand that they are trying to pass a bill or going to pass a bill for the aged, those that aren't under social security, and take it out of the social security money. I can't see anything right about that at all, if that's the way it's supposed to be, because we pay a tax for those that are under a certain amount of money, we pay a tax to pay the rest of it up, and to make them not a living, a bare existence. I think that if they would pass some laws to boost social security, put it up to where it is an insurance, we have paid for that, and I think if they would put that up to where we could possibly live and live decently and respectably the merchant of all kinds, your doctors and all, would live better because we would have more to spend. Just think of how many over 65 are in the United States today but have no money to spend. That's

what holds business down. Give us the money, we'll spend it and we'll spend it rightly.

Senator LONG. Thank you, Mr. Van Aken.

Mr. Van Aken, you mentioned that there was proposed legislation that would take money out of your social security bill. I have no information of that type of legislation pending or even being considered that would in any way effect the amount of social security that you receive. Perhaps the information you have is erroneous, because, I am sure, if there was such information, Dr. Hall or myself would have known something of it.

Mrs. Ola Shepard.

STATEMENT OF MRS. OLA SHEPARD

Mrs. SHEPARD. Senator Long, and Dr. Hall, I am speaking as an individual, just as a citizen.

My husband worked back in the years when wages were low, I am 71 and he is 76. In 1935 during the depression we voted for a 2-cent sales tax which we were told was for a pension for the aged, so that they would not have to fear county homes and such things, and then in 1936 during the depression and during the bad drought years we bought a little 40-acre farm to try to make a living for ourselves since my husband had been unemployed for 2 years. So we moved here and we have lived on this farm for 24 years. Then we did have to apply for some assistance, and it was called an assistance, which we didn't know at the time, I didn't. I thought we were entitled to a State pension as aged people. My husband was then past 67 and we didn't get in on social security because of this. Farmers had not been taken under social security after he had partially retired due to droughts and certain things that came up in our farm life. So we were drawing this assistance. Then last fall, a year ago, we sold our farm and we sold it for more than it was really worth, but it was sold from us, and really too quickly without thinking we sold it to a firm that came along and offered us this price and we thought we were bettering ourselves as my husband is in very poor health and getting older. So we moved to town and we find that we can't get social security and now can neither we get the State pension because we have a little more money than we were allowed to have and get the State pension. So we are now living on what we have, which is a little bit of savings, and we are down now to just a little over $2,000, and our problem is that whether we are going to get a pension at all or not or what is going to become of us now when this money is gone, because it is going fast at the prices and we are having a very expensive medical care and other medical attention that we are paying out money for and our money is going much faster than we like and we are troubled about what is going to happen to us now. If we know we could have an income, some way to carry us through life without fears and want and grief. My husband is grieving about it because he just doesn't feel that we are being cared for as we should under the laws of our State. Thank you.

Senator LONG. Thank you very much. Are there any other citizens now over 65 years of age?

STATEMENT OF MRS. STROUD

Mrs. STROUD. I would like to make a statement regarding other women who I have heard talk about their particular problems. Right now I am not so worried even though I am past 65. So is Mr. Stroud. I happen to know two women who are older than I who have had hospitalization since 1932 in a certain company. When one of them was pronounced with diabetes by her local physician and she needed to have some special tests, more than he had given her in his office laboratory, he committed her to a hospital for a few days and a lot of tests were made it developed she had some complication, and she was there 3 weeks before they decided to dismiss her. She got her old hospitalization policy out and presented it and to her dismay and hard luck it wasn't any good, and she had never collected off of that policy and had paid it all the years, so she told me and some of her other friends, since 1932. You can imagine the shock she had. And since that time she has searched for other hospitalization and hasn't been very lucky in getting it.

Then the second lady, I have sort of lost track of her on account of she's slow to write letters. She left Springfield. But I hear indirectly she is not faring very good because she's in a strange State and they would like to send her back to Missouri.

And then I know that drugs are very expensive and I know from having seen some hospitalization records of patients that they will charge $20 for sundries in the hospital, they will charge so much for laboratory and so much for drugs, and on their honor they told me all they had was a sleeping pill each night they were there for 10 days or so, and so when a bill runs up to three to four hundred dollars they are just wondering why so much is added and covered up. We just called it among ourselves fictitious names. Sundry might cover a lot of things which we might not know how to interpret from a hospital. And, anyway, $12 a day for the room and the meals. So a little plainer naming of what they make out statements for might help the patients' presence of mind or state of mind as the days go on. They are already sick and something like that seems to make them, if there is such a word as "sicker," why, I would use it here.

Senator LONG. Thank you, Mrs. Stroud, very much. Mrs. Stroud, just one or two statements on your part I didn't follow. Although there was some implication that perhaps some doctor had given you a charge for a medicine you didn't receive, I am sure that any reputable doctor would not do that or any reputable hospital, and the doctors, I am sure, are as anxious to curtail anyone who does that as you would be. If there is any activity of that kind, a hospital or anyone connected with the medical profession, I am sure that any reputable doctor would be happy to investigate it for you.

Mrs. STROUD. Well, they are all reputable in this town, anyway, by the standard of our society.

Senator LONG. The doctors and I don't agree perhaps on some problems, but I know they are highly ethical in their work. And just like us, if we found a crooked lawyer, we'd be happy to help you solve the problem.

Mrs. STROUD. And then the insurance companies, insurance companies that have people on their rolls and accept their money. And even this lady's husband paid her hospitalization in this company