The first drive for fundamental health-care reform that had any meaningful chance of success was under Harry S Truman. In retrospect, the odds always were stacked against it. Getting it through Congress would have been difficult in the best of times -- Taft's Republicans and Southern conservative Democrats were dead against it. Moreover, a then-massive, multimillion dollar PR blitz by the AMA -- which denounced national health care as "socialized medicine" (yup, Leah Vukmir et al are relying on some pretty old tropes in vilifying health care reform six decades later) -- successfully demonized it.
Instead corporate America and their political allies embraced employer sponsored health care.
In reading Harry S. Truman vs. the Medical Lobby by Monte Poen (a solid, if dry, work by a Truman fan that provides a good overview of the internal workings of the administration as it pushed health care reform), the Brawler was struck by words from a Truman address on Oct. 15, 1948 (p. 130):
What did the Republicans do with my proposal for health insurance? You can guess that one. They did nothing! All they said was -- 'Sorry. We can't do that. The medical lobby says its un-American.' And they listened to the lobbies in Congress.
I put it up to you. Is it un-American to visit the sick, aid the afflicted, or comfort the dying? I thought that was simple Christianity.
Does cancer care about political parties? Does infantile paralysis concern itself with income? Of course it doesn't.
The Democratic Party holds that the people are entitled to the best available medical care. We hold that they have a right to ask their Government to help.
With some editing -- thanks to Big Government, infantile paralysis looms less large in the American scene -- that speech could be given today.
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