SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 81, 30 December 1940, Page 4

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

Discountenanced In U.S.A. As one of the by-products of the Presidential campaign just closed, socialized medicine appears to have been taken out of national politics, states a leading article in the "Christian Science Monitor” of November 15. In tlie clamour of the week before the voting, a brake was put on the project that did not obtain lhe prominence it ordinarily would have received in the news. For a second time President Roosevelt gave a setback to tlie proposed system. In dedicating the National Institute of Health at Bethesda, Mil., the President said: “Neither the American people nor their movement intend to socialize medical practice any more than they plan to socialize industry." Socialized medicine generally includes compulsory health insurance, a system in which nay roll taxes are levied on both employer and employee, and the proceeds go toward paying sickness costs through a vast medical bureaucracy winch ensues. The President’s pronouncement was at once hailed by Dr. Sigismund SGoldwater, former Commissioner of tlie Department of Hospitals of New YorkCity. ns an encouragement of voluntary health insurance. The hospital administrator, who recently became head of a 1 hree-eents-a-day hospital insurance plan in New York, comimmted : "President Roosevelt’s statement will relieve the minds of physicians and laymen who feared that the country might soon be plunged into a complicated system of socialized medicine staggering in cost, ditliculi to administer. and doubtful as to the type of service it would provide. Tin' President s warning should he heeded by Labour leaders who have failed to lake advantage of tlie opportunity to promote non-profit pre-payment plans which are or can be made available in lull measure to meet the needs of working people for assured hospital care in all emergencies."

Last December President Roosevelt headed off legislation in Congress which would have served as an enabling Act for the system of providing large' Federal subsidies. Compulsory sickness insurance can he ini reduced in the United States only through lhe encouragement of Federal law, because Hie pay-roll taxes required tire so high as to handicap tlie business of any State which tries it alone. Yet the perennial efforts to get individual States to enact compulsory health insurance will no doubt, he renewed this winter. Hf’l'<'U>fort‘ the.v have failed in every ease. Next year they will find a new obstacle in Hie rejection of socialized medicine by both Presidential candidates, since Mr. M ilkie also declared against it during lhe campaign.