Senator PURTELL. All right.

Mrs. ELLICKSON. And for Dr. Brand to read his statement next and answer questions, and Mr. Brindle to read his statement. Senator PURTELL. All right.

Mrs. ELLICKSON. With us also is Mr. Paul Sifton, chairman of the CIO legislative subcommittee on social security.

up.

Senator PURTELL. Is it Mr. Sifton's desire to testify also? Mrs. ELLICKSON. No. There may be questions on points that come

I have no prepared statement.

Senator PURTELL. Was it your intention, Mrs. Ellickson, to have Mr. Curran's statement appear in full in the record and summarize it, or did you wish to read the statement as it is?

Mrs. ELLICKSON. I would like to read it, and if there are any questions, to answer them.

Senator PURTELL. You are at liberty to do so.

Mrs. ELLICKSON. My name is Katherine Ellickson, and I am asso ciate director of research of the CIO, as well as secretary of the CIO social-security committee.

This statement is presented on behalf of the Congress of Indus trial Organizations. Other witnesses are with me to explain the CIO position in more detail and to discuss the experience of their international unions in the field of health.

Also, I would like to introduce in the record the resolution that was unanimously adopted by the CIO convention last fall on the subject of health programs.

Senator PURTELL. It will be a part of the record. Do you want it inserted at this point or following your statement?

Mrs. ELLICKSON. Following the statement.

Senator PURTELL. It will be so entered.

Mrs. ELLICKSON. Every day thousands of people are dying and suffering unnecessarily in the United States because Congress has failed to push through to enactment bills that have long been pending before it. Even measures that have received the support of prominent members of both political parties have gathered dust.

We call upon you to end this delay. The people's needs for better medical care are well known. They have been studied by many groups in recent years, including your own committee.

Recent military developments, including germ warfare, the H-bomb, and poisonous gases, intensify the urgency of adding to our medical

resources.

Senator PURTELL. May I interrupt? When you speak of germ warfare do you speak of something that has been engaged in in warfare recently, or something anticipated.

Mrs. ELLICKSON. Anticipated. There have been repeated reports abouts its possibility. I certainly intend no allegations about Kores, if that is what you mean.

Senator PURTELL. I didn't think you did and I thought you wanted the record clarified.

Mrs. ELLICKSON. Quite the contrary.

Senator PURTELL. I thought so.

Mrs. ELLICKSON. The Nation is acting like a patient who puts off going to the doctor when he knows he should. The longer he waits, the greater the need and the higher the price.

The United States has been putting off passing adequate health legislation because some people fear it may cost too much or that they will get hurt. Insurance companies fear amputation of profitable business. Some doctors fear their incomes will be put on a restrictive diet or that they will have to change some of their habits. The doctors' fears are vastly exaggerated and based on distorted information. The insurance companies, who may, in fact, lose business, help fan the doctors' fears.

Together they keep manipulating the bogy of "socialized medicine" to stop much essential action, private or public, local or national. They even oppose freezing the pension rights of disabled workers on the fantastic grounds that it would be a step toward socialized medicine.

Senator PURTELL. Do you mean both the insurance companies and doctors collectively, or individually, oppose freezing the pension rights of disabled workers? To whom are you referring?

Mrs. ELLICKSON. Their organizations are opposing the freeze. In fact, the representative of the State Chambers of Commerce testified last week, I think, before the House Ways and Means Committee, and actually used this phrase of its being a step toward socialized medicine. Senator PURTELL. But I want to make it clear you were discussing the insurance companies and the doctors. Do you charge, or does your testimony wish to convey the idea, that the insurance companies individually or collectively, and that doctors individually or collectively, are opposed in freezing the pension rights, and that they have so stated?

Mrs. ELLICKSON. I don't mean that all insurance companies necessarily are opposed, but their spokesman, Mr. Call, testified they were opposed to the freeze. This is one of the recommendations of the administration in connection with the OASI.

Senator PURTELL. Yes.

Mrs. ELLICKSON. Unfortunately they also organize politically to scare Congressmen into inaction.

Our union members want to cooperate with the doctors but we bitterly resent the constant rebuffs we receive.

I might insert we have a high regard for the achievements of modern medical science and the skills of the doctors, and that is precisely why we want to cooperate with them and make their services available to our members.

Right now, our union efforts to establish satisfactory arrangements with doctors for providing medical care to our members are being frustrated or delayed in many communities. The leaders of the medical societies too often oppose essential forward steps by cooperatives or other voluntary groups just as they have opposed workmen's compensation and a vast host of social-welfare measures of more recent origin.

How long is Congress to take seriously these false images of socialized medicine conjured up by certain medical leaders and manipulated by the insurance companies?

The Nation's sailors have enjoyed free medical and hospital care provided by the Public Health Service since 1798. They want more and better facilities, not less.

Is President Eisenhower scared by hucksters slogans about socialized medicine after a lifetime in the Army?

Are the Members of Congress scared by the false use of the words "socialized medicine" when many of them make use of the fine facilities of the United States Naval Hospital in Bethesda and the Walter Reed Hospital?

And what about the veterans and their dependents and the millions who have profited from care in national, State, county, and city hospitals?

All these publicly run institutions might be considered socialized medicine since they are efforts by units of society to provide medical

care.

National health insurance, which the CIO favors, is not socialized medicine, since it would not increase direct provisions of medical services by the Government.

Senator PURTELL. May I interrupt? Then do you want this to indicate and I will judge from your testimony that you do that the CIO, for whom you are speaking, is opposed to socialized medicine. Mrs. ELLICKSON. No; I don't think it would be right to use that phrase, because that phrase is so distorted no one knows what it means. Senator PURTELL. The reason why I use it is because you do. You say it is not socialized medicine, so I have the impression you have an idea of what socialized medicine is, and I wonder whether you wish the record to show that the CIO is opposed to what you call socialized medicine?

Mrs. ELLICKSON. We are not opposed to the United States Naval Hospital in Bethesda. We are not opposed to the Walter Reed Hos pital. We are not opposed to veterans' hospitals or city and county hospitals. What does one mean by socialized medicine?

Senator PURTELL. You mentioned it. I don't want to argue the point. You say:

National health insurance, which the CIO favors, is not socialized med!

cine

Mrs. ELLICKSON. One reason why we thought it important to talk about this is that we understand Mrs. Hobby, when she was here, tried to make clear that the President's recommendation was not socialized medicine, and there may have been some misunderstanding to the effect that we thought national health insurance was socialized medicine. We doubt if that is what she meant, but I understand some people present got the impression she might be implying that national health insurance was socialized medicine. So we thought it important to make clear it is not socialized medicine.

We hope you will weigh this essential program in the light of facts, not in the treacherous shadows cast by bogeymen dancing on strings pulled by unseen hands.

National health insurance would preserve the free choice of doctors and patients. It would promote efficient provision of medical services and high quality of care. One of its main virtues is that it would remove the financial barrier which now keeps patients from going to the doctor when symptoms first occur. By encouraging preventive medicine, it would tend to hold down total medical costs as well as to avoid illness and premature death. It would avoid a means test, paying benefits as a matter of right and relating contributions to in

come.

We suspect that the aristocracy of the medical societies object particularly to the fact that under national health insurance the people, through their Government, would have something to say about the charges of the doctors who elect to cooperate with the program. Yet there are few essential services today about which people now have so little to say as to the cost of medical care. Often they do not know the price they are to pay until the doctor's bill is received.

The Senate Committee on Education and Labor published an excellent description of national health insurance in 1946, which discusses in detail just how the program would work. Plenty of room is offered for local initiative and for freedom to both doctors and patients.

If

you are not willing to recommend national health insurance at this time

Senator PURTELL. I am fearful perhaps your statement, "If you are not willing to recommend national health insurance at this time" might indicate we have some pending bills in the Senate on national health insurance. We do not have any, and of course we are holding hearings on the bill before us. We have no bills on national health insurance in the Senate.

Mrs. ELLICKSON. There is one in the House.

Senator PURTELL. Yes; but there is not one in the Senate. I am sorry for the interruption, but I do not want, and I am sure you do not want either, to have the evidence convey the idea in any way that we have a bill here and we are not acting on it. We do not have such a bill before the Senate committee.

Mrs. ELLICKSON. I understand. But you do have the excellent report on the subject published by the Senate committee which explains all of the basic mechanisms of the proposal.

If you are not willing to recommend national health insurance at this time, we urge you to pass other measures which will at least move in the direction of providing somewhat better medical services for more of the great majority who now lack adequate services.

Congress should enact an aid-to-medical-education bill so that we may have more doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel. The Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare unanimously reported such a bill in the 1st session of the 82d Congress.

Congress should enact a bill to aid State and local public-health service units, such as was passed by the Senate in the 82d Congress. Congress should also appropriate larger sums for medical research. The total of these has been cut in recent years even though the amount for certain items has been increased.

The appropriations for construction of hospitals and other medical facilities should be increased to the full $150 million authorized by the Hill-Burton Act. The administration has decommended only $50 million for this purpose, in addition to the $62 million proposed with amendments to earmark funds for certain types of establish

ments.

You can also aid the development of voluntary medical care insurance plans in a realistic way.

You can authorize loans to cooperatives and other nonprofit groups as provided in the Humphrey loan bill (S. 1052). Authorizing loans

for each of 2 years of $10 million would help many rural and sma'ltown groups where needs are greatest, as well as larger communities.

You can also follow the less satisfactory but perhaps helpful course of Federal insurance-of-mortgage loans, somewhat along the lines of the Wolverton bill in the House (H. R. 7700).

Even more important, you can authorize grants to nonprofit medi cal-care plans to enable them to experiment with overcoming two of their greatest deficiencies: (1) Failure to provide comprehensive services, and (2) difficulty in reaching low-income groups.

We recommend that the Federal Government make $25 million available for such grants in the next year. This use of the sum would be much more constructive than the proposal of reinsurance of voluntary plans in the Smith bill (S. 3114).

Our proposal for experimental grants to nonprofit medical-care associations is a new one, not embodied in any bill. It will be discussed in more detail in other CIO testimony.

CIO unions have done as much as any group in the United States to promote the development and improvement of voluntary medical-care plans. The great majority of our members are covered by such plar in one form or another. Some of our unions have established ther own diagnostic centers. From practical experience we know the limitations of these voluntary plans as well as their advantages over the lack of any type of group protection.

These limitations are many. Often only part of medical bills are paid, and doctors keep raising their charges. Coverage based on employment is lost during layoffs or if a worker changes jobs. Often home and office care, which is essential for proper preventive medicine, is not covered. Charges tend to keep going up, so that low-incor groups, including the unemployed or the aged, have difficulty meeting payments on an individual basis. Many plans exclude certain typ of individuals or preexisting conditions.

Our unions are striving constantly to overcome these limitations We believe the program of grants, loans, and reinsurance of mortgage loans, which we are supporting, would help their constructive develop

ment.

But this does not lessen our conviction that the sooner nations' health insurance is enacted, the better. It will permit the contr ation of voluntary plans, so that the more that is accomplished in in proving facilities and education and research, the better the nations' health-insurance program will be when it is enacted.

An enduring example of CIO's interest in improving voluntary health institutions occurred just last week, when the Philip Murray Memorial Foundation, financed by union donations primarily, pre sented $150,000 to the new Providence Hospital in Washington, D. As CIO Vice President Emil Rieve said in presenting the gift, th constructive tribute to the CIO leader will help

to perpetuate, through this clinic, Providence Hospital's long and construct.se work to help the sick and injured of all races, colors, creeds, and econet.^

status.

The choice before the Nation is not whether the National Gover ment should seek to improve health or whether private agree should. The issue is, How can Government and private actio used together to make good medical care available to everyone!