Marxists’ Internet Archive: ETOL Home Page: Trotskyist Writers Section: Farrel Dobbs
Source: The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 52, 27 December 1948, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcription & Mark-up: Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Lack of proper medical care will cause? 325,000 people to die needlessly in this country during 1949.
There is only one doctor for every 800 people and only half enough hospital beds for the most urgent needs. Less than a third of all counties have some organized health service.
To make a had matter worse, the military is grabbing doctors and nurses, snatching hospital facilities and stockpiling medical supplies for war.
Because of the high prices resulting from these dangerous shortages, 68 million people in families with incomes below $3,000 a year are hard pressed to meet the barest medical needs.
These shocking facts explain the driving force behind the present campaign of the unions to establish health and welfare, funds. They also explain why Truman saw a chance to catch votes by promising action to improve the public health, and why the administration now feels compelled to ask Congress for compulsory health insurance legislation.
According to Oscar Ewing, Federal Security Administrator, the government, proposes to pay doctor and hospital bills from an insurance fund and provide disability benefits to offset loss of wages through sickness. Additional hospitals and medical schools would be established and medical research expanded.
Described in those broad terms the plan sounds pretty good. No worker will question the responsibility of the government to take measures for the protection of the public health. But when you get down to the question, “Who gets what and how?” under Ewing’s proposals, there are plenty of jokers. Here are a few examples that show why the labor movement must fight for drastic revision of the Truman administration’s health program.
Most of the union health and welfare funds are financed entirely by the employers, as they should be. Under the plan announced by Ewing, the workers would have to pay an additional 2½% tax on their already heavily taxed wages. People left out of the present Social Security setup, such as agricultural workers and domestic employees, would not come under the plan.
The proposed disability insurance would pay only “about half” the normal earnings during the first six months of illness and would thereafter be “comparable to old-age benefits.” Old-age “benefits” now average about $25 a month.
Ewing said he didn’t know “how far we can go” in abolishing racial segregation in the medical field. It will be about as far as you can throw a bull by the tail, because he said part of the plan was “to enlarge facilities for Negro medical schools,” which exist only because Negroes are generally barred from white schools.
The funds collected by the federal government would be divided among the states according to population and administered through local boards of doctors and “laymen.”
Who would .the “laymen” be? Wealthy business men, pompous judges, rich lawyers, moss-backed college professors, up-and-coming young Junior-Chamber-of-Commerce hot shots, muddle-headed preachers, and maybe a housebroken “labor statesman” for window dressing.
There is about as much sense of justice and feeling of human compassion in a gang like that as there is pity in a banker’s cold stare.
The administration’s health program is title mors than a device for the government to raise funds which would be controlled by the capitalists.
Nevertheless, the American Medical Association is howling that the whole thing is the “first and most dangerous step in the direction of complete state socialism.” Supporting the AMA opposition to Ewing’s proposals are the big drug-firms and insurance companies.
The AMA is ruled with an iron hand by the House of Delegates, a clique of rich doctors who think and act just like Ford and Rockefeller., They are raising a $3,500,000 “war chest” by compelling the AMA members to pay a $25 assessment or lose their hospital connections. The “war chest,” which is tax exempt, will be used for lobbying against health legislation.
Doctors favoring a government health program are raising a voluntary fund for a countercampaign against the propaganda of the House of Delegates.
If the AMA rank and file, and students seeking a career in medicine, want to fight for an efficient national health policy, they must form a battle alliance with the workers, farmers and all the little people victimized by monopoly capitalism.
That mighty alliance must go far beyond the feeble reforms proposed by the Truman administration. A Workers and Farmers Government must be created to abolish degenerate capitalism and establish an enlightened socialist society.
The Workers and Farmers Government will break the House of Delegates’ stranglehold on the hospitals, medical colleges and state medical boards. The drug monopoly will be expropriated. The building trusts and real estate syndicates will be taken over to clear the way for large-scale construction of new hospitals and neighborhood clinics.
Racial discrimination and the treatment of women as second class citizens in the medical service will be outlawed. Genuine equality of opportunity will prevail in a program to train a great army of medical scientists. Instead of developing atom bombs and germ warfare, the scientists will be mobilized for battle against cancer and the other dread killers which are taking such a heavy toll of human life.
Doctors will no longer have to waste their time over the imaginary illnesses of well-to-do hypochondriacs in order to get money for rent and groceries. They can be true scientists, serving the needy and exploring new fields of medical knowledge, fulfilling the golden dreams of their student youth.
Under the socialist economy of abundance, people won’t have, to neglect their bodies, suffering needless pain and apprehension, nor be blighted by correctable deformities because they can’t afford medical care. It won’t be the cruel farce it so often is today when the doctor tells a patient to eat rich food, lay off work for a while and don’t worry about anything. There will be no more humiliating experiences with the sordid practices of charity medicine under capitalism.
Diseases of malnutrition will be fought by malting sure everybody has enough to eat. Those disabled by sickness or accident will be guaranteed full economic security for the duration of their disability. Everyone, regardless of race, color or creed, will get the best of medical care from the cradle to the grave.
The working people will say to the medical scientists,
“Here are your tools – hospitals, clinics, medicines, research laboratories, everything you need. Use them to correct whatever defects you may find in our bodies. Try to prevent us from becoming ill and treat us promptly if we should sicken. Help us live, a completely, healthy, happy and long life.
“In return, we shall see that you men and women of medical science have abundant food, clothing, shelter, everything you may need for a full and happy life.”
When that day comes, the needless death of a single “person will cause a national scandal.
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Last updated: 26 March 2023