March 11, 1949: A Gallup poll reveals that only 33 percent of Americans favor the health care reform plan issued by President Harry S Truman. The plan is, for all intents and purposes, dead.
Twice, Truman thought he had a mandate to reform America's health care system. The 1st time was in the wake of the victory in World War II. On November 19, 1945, he sent a Special Message to Congress, recommending the adoption and funding of "a comprehensive and modern health program for the Nation, consisting of five major parts":
1. Construction of hospitals and related facilities.
2. Expansion of public health, maternal, and child care services.
3. Medical education and research.
4. Prepayment of medical costs through a compulsory national health insurance program, covering medical, hospital, nursing, and laboratory services.
5. Protection against loss of wages through sickness and disability through a national disability insurance program.
Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York -- whose son, also named Robert F., would be elected Mayor of New York in 1953, '57 and '61 -- had written the bill creating Social Security. He wrote a bill containing the legislative provisions to enact Truman's plan into law. But it got debated to death in committees, and never came up for a vote.
Truman did eventually get Numbers 1, 2 and 3 on that list, including an expansion of the National Institutes of Health, and the creation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the NIH and the CDC). Number 5 took until Lyndon Johnson, with his 1965 act expanding Social Security, including the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. It was Number 4 that was the sticking point: The national health insurance program.
But the American Medical Association, which was dedicated not to better treatment of patients but to increasing profits for hospitals, spread propaganda. The AMA bought advertising space in newspapers and magazines, and advertising time on radio stations, saying that the plan would result in an increase in taxes. This was true. They also said the plan was "Communist." This was a lie.
There was also a competing bill, submitted by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, son of a President, and the Senate's leading conservative, to the point where he was known as "Mr. Republican." His bill would have allowed States to make healthcare private. As Republicans regained control of both houses of Congress in the 1946 election, Truman's health care bill died.
But in 1948, Truman not only won what amounted to a 2nd term, but swept the Democratic Party back into power in both houses of Congress. And Britain's National Health Service had begun operation, and had proved popular. Thus, for the 2nd time, Truman had a mandate. Theodore Roosevelt had his "Square Deal" programs, Franklin Roosevelt his "New Deal," so Truman called his program the "Fair Deal": Submitting a revised version of his health care reform plan, and improvements in civil rights, welfare, labor, education, housing, and more. He ended up getting most of it.
But, except for his desegregation of the armed forces, which he had already done in 1948, he wouldn't get much in the realm of civil rights. During his 1st term, Jackie Robinson had desegregated baseball. Joe Louis retired after 12 years as Heavyweight Champion of the World. But, as they always do when gains are made in civil rights, white supremacists fought back.
This time, they had an ally: The AMA. They told the all-white hospitals of the South that Truman's plan would mean they would have to take black patients as well as white patients. Which was true, but devastating to their sense of self. Never mind that they could have had "separate but equal" wings for blacks and whites in said hospitals: They didn't want black patients to even be in the same building.
And so, white Southern hospitals, who donated to conservative Democratic politicians in the South, let those politicians know, in no uncertain terms, that they had to abandon the plan, or else they would lose those campaign contributions. Pretty soon, word spread throughout the South, and the common people also turned against it. Truman later wrote, "There are a lot of people in Congress who jump when the American Medical Association cracks the whip."
The Gallup poll of March 11, 1949 told the tale: With 90 percent of white Southerners against it, and nearly half of the rest of the country against it, it didn't have a chance. Truman continued to fight for it until the end of his Presidency on January 20, 1953, but considered it his greatest failure.
On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson went to the Harry S Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri. In front of Harry and Bess Truman, he signed the Social Security Amendments of 1965 into law, creating Medicare for the elderly, Medicaid for the indigent, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for the disabled. LBJ handed the former President Medicare Card Number 1, and the former First Lady Medicare Card Number 2.
In 1974, President Richard Nixon submitted a health care reform plan. If he thought it would make Democrats want to keep him in office, he was wrong.
In 1992, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas ran for President. His campaign included the argument that there were only 2 "industrialized nations" in the world that didn't have a national health service. America was one, and Clinton vowed to make it happen. The other was South Africa, which, at the time, was not a country you wanted your own to be compared to.
In 1994, Clinton's health care reform plan was killed in a Congressional Committee. A few months earlier, Nelson Mandela won South Africa's 1st all-races election. The first bill he signed into law as President was for the establishment of a national health service. That left only one such country.
"God bless America."
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March 11, 1949 was a Friday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There were no games scheduled for the NHL. One game was played in the Basketball Association of America, which would become the NBA the next season: The Boston Celtics beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 108-100 at the Boston Garden.
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