"Unmistakably & Emphatically"

Last fall, shortly after President Roosevelt called a National Health Conference in Washington, the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association met in Chicago to consider the recommendations of the conference. Although A.M.A. spokesmen had been hostile to any suggestion of "Federal interference" in medicine, the House made an about-face in Chicago, indicated their approval of: Government care for indigent patients, expansion of public health services, construction of Federal hospitals where needed, expansion of voluntary health insurance schemes. Their only remaining objection was to compulsory health insurance which was discussed at the conference.

In February, Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York introduced a national health bill embodying A.M.A.'s recommendations. Although the bill made no mention of compulsory health insurance, it contained a provision for Federal grants to individual States for any schemes of medical care they might wish to set up. That way, of course, is a likely back alley to socialized medicine.

Last week, the A.M.A. met for its goth annual convention in St. Louis and balked. The convention adopted a resolution declaring that it was "unmistakably and emphatically opposed" to all provisions of the Wagner Bill. The Bureau of Legal Medicine denounced it for unnecessarily expanding the work of the U. S. Public Health Service and Social Security Board, for "extreme vagueness [in spending] vast sums of money" and the "great powers conferred on certain Federal officers in the control of the spending," and a special committee of the House of Delegates met in camera for three days, emerged with a document listing 22 objections to the Wagner Plan. Hottest hits: "The bill insidiously promotes the development of a complete system of tax-supported Government medical care," and "the bill provides for supreme Federal control."

After these drastic criticisms, which were approved unanimously by the House, the committee urged the development of locally administered systems of medical care for the indigent, suggested that only States "in actual heed" be given Federal grants to help their indigents. Moreover, the Committee insisted that States give their "medical indigents" cash benefits to pay doctors' bills, and abandon the custom of paying doctors through relief agencies. This would preserve for physicians the privilege of adjusting the size of their bills.

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