Expensive Operation

U.S. doctors learned last week how much it costs to wage all-out propaganda war against President Truman's national health insurance program: in eight months, the American Medical Association's press-agents had spent a whopping $1,394,000. But to the 3,942 A.M.A. members gathered in Washington, no price seemed too high to fight off the threat of socialized medicine. So the A.M.A. voted, for the first time in its' 102-year history, to levy dues ($25 a year) on its members.*

While most of the doctors attended technical meetings or watched color-televised operations, the 191-member house of delegates met at a long, green-topped table in the Hotel Statler. A.M.A. President Ernest Irons made no bones about it: the meetings were being held in Washington to make sure that the doctors' drumfire was heard by their enemies in government offices.

President-elect Elmer Henderson sounded the war cry: "Let's face our battle of Armageddon . . . No other profession, in . . . this country, has been brought under such violent attack by those ambitious for political power over it . . ."

Imported Virus. Sitting at the back of the room as Henderson spoke were platinum-haired Clem Whitaker and his copper-haired business partner-wife, Leone Baxter, who were hired last February at $100,000 a year to give the medical profession's account of itself to the U.S. public. Whitaker & Baxter reported on what they had done since "the virus of socialized medicine had spread from decadent Europe and taken deep root here."

Examples: "More than 55 million pieces of campaign literature were . . . distributed, carrying medicine's answer to the federal plan . . . Over 65,000 posters of The Doctor* went up in medical offices and elsewhere to dramatize the case against political medicine."

Said Whitaker & Baxter: "The first skirmishes were ended and won. Unfortunately, the war was not." These first skirmishes had been paid for out of $2,250,000 raised from voluntary $25 assessments, which 75% of the A.M.A.'s active, assessable members had paid. The money was running out fast. To pay for the decisive engagement which the A.M.A.'s top brass expects in 1950, conscript dollars were needed. The house of delegates ruled that any doctor who falls 13 months behind in dues would forfeit membership.

Gloomy Prognosis. At once, worried A.M.A. members asked whether a doctor who defaulted on A.M.A. dues would have to be dropped from his county or state medical society. If he were, he could not get staff appointments at most hospitals nor get his patients into their beds. Dr. Louis Bauer, chairman of the board of trustees, said that this need not happen.

But rebels in the A.M.A.'s own ranks were not reassured. New York Clinician Ernst P. Boas loosed a blast for the Physicians' Forum, which favors the Fair Deal's national health plan. The dues levy, said he, "is against the interests of a majority of Americans, who need a national prepayment system of medical care ... It will convert the professional organization of America's physicians into a political lobby."

Many physicians who disagreed with Dr. Boas' first statement agreed with his second. What the A.M.A. was doing might be all right for industry associations or organized labor. But doctors wondered how compulsory contributions for political purposes would affect the traditional position of the medical profession in U.S. life.

*Before the dues vote, any member of a county or state medical society who paid the $12 annual subscription to its Journal was a member of the A.M.A. The association has financed itself from Journal and other A.M.A. magazine subscriptions (topping $1,400,000 a year) and advertising (up to $3,500,000).

*Sir Luke Fildes' famous painting, now captioned by Whitaker & Baxter: "Keep Politics Out of This Picture."

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