AMA-sponsored album featuring Ronald Reagan from the early 60s

1. Reform is foreign (anti-nationalistic)

As early as 1911-1912 leading national voices such as Theodore Roosevelt and the AMA were calling for a new health care infrastructure that would provide health insurance to all Americans with a particular focus on working class Americans. Organized opposition from other physician organizations and conservative elements stymied these efforts. One of the leading arguments used was that the health reform efforts were an attempt by the German Emperor (Kaizer Wilhelm II) to take over America.

When Truman attempted to pass national health reform the AMA (one of the leading opposition groups) hired a PR firm to find some means of attacking the efforts. The PR firm quickly came up with a phrase that we may be far too familiar with – “Socialized Medicine”. This was used to hype public opposition to the plan on the grounds that any effort to provide easy access health care for all Americans was a “communist plot”.

When Lyndon Johnson managed to manipulate Congress into creating Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 we see the same arguments repeated. In fact, making one of his initial forays onto the national political scene we find, then, California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan making the following recorded speech.

“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people, has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project — most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it. Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it.”