Austin Dispatches No. 135 |
July 21, 2010 |
Similarly, he withheld support from Robert Wagner's National Health Bill, which would have established a program of medical insurance and authorized federal aid for child and maternity care, public health services, and hospital construction. Roosevelt dodged a conflict with the American Medical Association by endorsing instead a proposal to construct fifty hospitals; a modified version passed the Senate in 1940 only to die in the House. Finally, the president looked with disfavor on additional deficit spending for social purposes. As he told Henry Morgenthau, Jr., in July 1939, "I am sick and tired of having a lot of long-haired people around here who want a billion dollars for schools, a billion dollars for public health. Just because a boy wants to go to college is no reason we should finance it."22Roosevelt probably wanted to use the money instead to build warships that he could sacrifice at Pearl Harbor, but that’s another matter.23
takes more than 2,700 pages to make sure not just that some states will be treated differently from others because their senators offered key political support, but more importantly to codify bargains between the government and various parts of the health care industry, state governments, and large employers about who would receive what benefits (e.g., public employee unions and auto workers) and who would pass what indirect taxes onto the general public.24Obama’s temporary appointee to run Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid, Donald Berwick, is a fan of health care rationing.25 This means refusing to treat old, sick patients as a way of keeping health costs down when the actual government-subsidized health care costs inevitably turn out to be vastly higher than originally projected.26
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