August 5, 2007
The “Iron Grip” of Guaranteed Universal Health Care Revealed
Ronald Reagan was a prominent participant in a massive American Medical Association PR campaign against a broadly supported single-payer universal health care system that was about to be approved in the United States in 1949, a final brick in the New Deal’s social insurance program. The AMA campaign, orchestrated by Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter in league with the National Association of Manufacturers, effectively killed off a proposal that was earlier considered a shoe-in. Putting on an anti-communist horror show about America drowning in a whirlpool of socialistic robotization, their “success” insured that health care would not be an inalienable right for people in the United States. Like today, fear of a demonic enemy served as a cloak for assaults on the rights of ordinary Americans. Today, we live with the disastrous aftereffects of their success.