“This year,” said President Kennedy, “or certainly as inevitably as the tide comes in, next year, this bill is going to pass.” Retorted American Medical Association President Leonard Larson: “This bill will be defeated. You may see the end of this in the 87th Congress.” Thus, last week, the Administration and the A.M.A. squared off for a fight over the President’s program to provide medical care for the aged under social security. In their claims and counterclaims, both sides seemed partly wrong. The King-Anderson bill, as the program is known, is unlikely to pass Congress this year, and maybe not next. But neither is it going to disappear—and it will certainly be around in November as a major election issue.
The King-Anderson bill is scheduled to come before the powerful House Ways and Means Committee soon—and the prospects look bleak for the Administration. As of last week, the committee stood 15 to 10 against reporting the bill out, with ten Republicans and five Democrats, including Chairman Wilbur Mills, opposed to the measure. Only a change of heart by Arkansas’ Mills figures to get the bill through—and Mills has already resisted all sorts of Administration pressures, including frequent phone calls from President Kennedy and political action by Administration followers back home.
A Few Lessons. Mills believes the King-Anderson program would alter the philosophy and jeopardize the future of the entire social security system. Moreover, he was co-sponsor of the existing Kerr-Mills Act, whose provisions for medical care are backed by the A.M.A.
Even if the Ways and Means Committee pigeonholes the King-Anderson bill, it can still be brought to the House floor by a discharge petition or by tacking it onto another tax bill as an amendment.
The chances for either action are slim; with all the contradictory pressures and emotions aroused by King-Anderson, most House members are very willing to let it rest in Ways and Means. As for President Kennedy, he feels he can hardly lose, no matter what happens. If the bill passes the House, he can claim a great victory. If it does not, he intends to heap all the blame on the Republicans, even though he has a lopsided Democratic majority. Last week, in an all-out effort to make the nation aware of its efforts, the Administration gave the A.M.A. a few lessons in the art of rough and tumble propaganda.
“Give Us Your Help.” The highlight of the Administration drive came when President Kennedy addressed 20,000 people—most of them elderly—at a Madison Square Garden rally. Speaking over all three major TV networks (he was granted free time on the absurd theory that his speech was nonpolitical), the President charged the A.M.A. with failure to understand the King-Anderson bill, even went so far as to equate opposition to the bill with opposition to social security. Asked he of his audience: “Come and give us your help.”
As Kennedy spoke, officials of his Administration had fanned out across the U.S. to appear at 32 other rallies coordinated by the National Council of Senior Citizens. Vice President Lyndon Johnson spoke to a crowd of 1,500 in St. Louis, Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges to about 1,000 in Boston, Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg to more than 4,000 in Miami. Other rallies were addressed by Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman in Cincinnati, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall in Kansas City, Housing Administrator Robert Weaver in Washington, D.C., Deputy Postmaster General William Brawley in Baltimore, HEW Assistant Secretary Wilbur Cohen in San Diego, HEW Under Secretary Ivan Nestingen in Wilmington, Del., FHA Commissioner Neal J. Hardy in La Crosse, Wis., Small Business Administrator John E. Horne in Columbus, Ohio, and VA Administrator John Gleason in Peoria. The sponsors claimed a total attendance of 100,000, but the A.M.A. insisted that the total was closer to 45,000, and even Administration backers admitted that some of the crowds were disappointing.
The A.M.A. had hoped to get free television time to reply to the President, but the networks refused the request. Instead, the A.M.A. paid more than $75,000 to put on a half-hour rebuttal over NBCTV. Speaking from an all-but-empty Madison Square Garden (to dramatize the A.M.A.’s “grossly unfair disadvantage” in competing with the President), Dr. Edward R. Annis of Miami urged the defeat of King-Anderson as “a cruel hoax and a delusion.” In President Kennedy’s native Boston, no one heard the message. NBC’s outlet there refused even to let the A.M.A. buy time.
The 185,000-member A.M.A., far from being helpless in opposing the President, is a powerful force to reckon with. In Washington the A.M.A. annually spends $164,000 on lobbying—and it has doubtless spent much more this year. Yet this time the organization was up against one of the most formidable opponents in its history—and it knew it. Charging that “hordes” of Government officials were traveling about the country on taxpayers’ money to press for King-Anderson, the A.M.A.’s President Larson called the Administration’s effort “a massive propaganda blitz.” He was right. President Kennedy has set up a medical-care brain center of aides in the White House to coordinate nationwide activities and write speeches and TV and radio presentations. The biggest weapon the Administration has going for it is a potentially decisive political force: organized groups of the elderly. With almost 17 million Americans over 65, the U.S. aged are feeling their oats. Between 1957 and 1961, the number of aged organizations in the U.S. has grown from 4,000 to 7,000.
More than 600,000 signatures of senior citizens—the term they prefer—have been affixed to petitions favoring King-Anderson, and nearly 400,000 oldsters have penned letters to their Congressmen pleading for support for the bill.
Dentures to Doctors. What are the aged fighting for—and what are the foes of King-Anderson opposing? Strangely, the existing Kerr-Mills Act offers far more financial help to the aged than the King-Anderson bill; in effect it pays all medical bills—from dentures to doctors—for those who qualify. It offers matching federal funds to states for health care for the aged out of general tax revenues, thus costs the wealthy taxpayer more than the poor to support. Its opponents point out that its eligibility requirements practically force the aged to take a pauper’s oath and that, in any case, it has not worked out in practice: of 24 states that have adopted it, only six have it in full operation, and 90% of all recipients live in only five states.
The King-Anderson bill, on the other hand, would be financed by a ½% increase in social security payments (¼% each to be paid by employer and employee) and a rise in the social security base from $4,800 to $5,000 a year—thus costing everyone, rich and poor, about $13 a year.
It would pay no doctor bills, drug costs or other auxiliary benefits, but would meet hospital bills up to 90 days (the patient would have to pay $10 a day for the first nine), nursing-home services for 180 days, outpatient services (beyond $20) and home services up to 240 visits a year. It would also provide coverage for those who desire it at age 62, as against 65 for the Kerr-Mills Act.
In a sense, the senior citizens have already won their fight: the argument now is not whether they should get medical care, but rather how much, how administered and how financed. Still, the general agreement that the U.S. must provide for its elderly population will not prevent medicare from being a hot issue in the November election.
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