I have always maintained that if a program is to be successful, it must... be voluntary... based on need and must not be financed through a payroll tax.
This program could destroy private initiative for our aged to protect themselves with insurance against the cost of illness….Presently, over 60 percent of our older citizens purchase hospital and medical insurance without Government assistance. This private effort would cease if Government benefits were given to all our older citizens.
We oppose the Medicare program because foreign experience has shown that socialized medicine is harmful to both the doctor and the patient, primarily to the patient. He suffers most.
We are going on the assumption that this is not socialized medicine. Let me tell you here and now it is socialized medicine.
...we cannot stand idly by now, as the Nation is urged to embark on an ill-conceived adventure in government medicine, the end of which no one can see, and from which the patient is certain to be the ultimate sufferer.
[The Medicare bill would] set up a health care program which served little or no necessary social purpose and which would be a direct, unwarranted and completely unfair intrusion in private enterprise.
...the result of such programs in other countries had been over utilization of facilities and rising costs, and that as emphasis shifted from quality to cost, as it must under a publicly financed program, a deterioration in the quality of care is inescapable.
[There is] no demonstrable need for the program.
It is socialism. It moves the country in a direction which is not good for anyone, whether they be young or old. It charts a course from which there will be no turning back.
Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business.
