Newsletter, Committee for the Nation's Health

COMMITTEE for the -: N A T I 0 N'S HEALTH 1416 F Street, N.W. Kellogg Building January 5, 1950 Telephone: EX. 8156 Washington, D.C. TRUMAN TO COOPERATING ORGANIZATIONS: ARCHIVES AND NATIONAL I RECORDS SERVICE The following are: Es COVERHINENT A review of the American Medical Association's actions at the meeting of its House of Delegates last month. Comment on these actions. Copies of AMA resolutions or statements which support the above and which may be useful for quotation. THE A M A versus HUMAN NEEDS "Compulsion is being substituted for liberty done insiduously by deficit spending, by wasteful subsidies under the egis of economic planning slowly, craftily, step by step." AMA President Dr. Ernest E. Irons to the House of Delegates, Dec. 6, 1949. These words of the Presidential address set the political tone of the AMA's Washington, D.C. meeting, Dec. 6-9, 1949. They were followed up and confirmed by the leading editorial in the Dec. 17th issue of the AMA Journal. Organized medi- cine's lobby is now translating them into political action to oppose constructive health legislation, The work of the lobby is done by the AMA's $100,000-a-year public relations firm, Whitaker and Baxter, and by the State and County medical societies which utilize the "literature" (55,000,000 pieces produced in 1949) and the guidance of the national bodies. The Clinical Session with its scientific papers and exhibits drew 8,400 doctors The political session included the 175 members of the AMA's House of Delegates, mostly elected by the State societies, and "the works" of the AMA, the nine members of the Board of Trustees. I. AMA ACTION OPPOSING LEGISLATION 1. Opposed federal funds to aid professional schools and to train more doctors and other personnel. Last year the Senate passed S. 1453 unanimously. The AMA did not oppose it then. Now AMA authorities declare the measure grants federal offici- als "too much potential authority to interfere in the internal administration of the medical schools. " 2. Opposed the School Health Services Bill (s. 1411), passed by the Senate in 1949. This reaffirms previous AMA action. To treat sick children without first subjecting their parents to the indignities of a means test is opposed by AMA leaders as "unwise."