It was denounced as a socialist program that would compete with private insurers and add to Americans’ tax burden so as to kill jobs. One Republican representative predicted that “Americans would come to feel “the lash of the dictator”. Another Republican representative said, “Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers.” A Republican senator declared that it would “end the progress of a great country.”
The AMA called it a step towards nationalized medicine which still would not protect the neediest, said it was a cruel hoax and a delusion. One Miami doctor said, “it wastefully covers millions who do not need it. It heartlessly ignores millions who do need coverage. It is not true insurance. It will create an enormous and unpredictable burden on every working taxpayer. It offers sharply limited benefits.
“It will undercut and destroy the wholesome growth of private voluntary insurance and prepayment health programs… which offer flexible benefits in the full range of individual needs.”
The WSJ editorial page predicted that the legislation will lead to “deteriorating service.” Business groups warned that Washington bureaucrats will invade “the privacy of the examination room,” that we are on the road to rationed care and that patients will lose the “freedom to choose their own doctor.”
The head of the AMA said that “a deterioration in the quality of care is inescapable.” The president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons went further and suggested that for doctors to cooperate with Medicare would be ”complicity in evil.”
So what are these these quotes referring to? A reasonable guess might be the health care bill(s), given how familiar they sound if you’ve been following the debate at all. But they actually refer to two different programs, ones that you probably believe are essential to all Americans.