#9 'A 1969 "Oral History Interview" with Oscar R. Ewing, formerly President Truman's administrator of the Federal Security Agency (predecessor of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare) reveals that, in Ewing's words, "national health insurance had been proposed by President Roosevelt in the very first social security bill introduced in Congress back in 1934." But, as Ewing explained, the American Medical Association "didn't want the Government to have a thing to do with medicine. They opposed every bill that was introduced in Congress that even remotely would involve Government in medicine." (Their opposition extended to government support of any medical research, and they proposed that doctors "raise ten million dollars a year for research" - a sum Ewing thought the AMA intended to solicit largely from the pharmaceutical industry. "the pharmaceutical manufacturers.") President Roosevelt, whose wife, Eleanor, had been persuaded by her own doctor of the rashness of pushing for national health insurance, decided to withdraw that provision from the social security bill. His strategy now, said Ewing, was to "get what he could" right away, and try later for national health insurance.
The Wagner-Murray-Dingell Bill, introduced in Congress in 1943, did include a national health insurance provision, but it was rebuffed even though a Gallup (American Institute of Public Opinion) poll had reported 59% of respondents favoring the inclusion in the Social Security program of payments for sickness, disability, doctor and hospital bills.[4]
Roosevelt's successor, Harry Truman, proposed in 1945 a national health insurance plan to a recalcitrant Congress; and Oscar Ewing, undeterred by defeat and with Truman's support, began to advocate such a plan publicly early in 1948. At this point, the tag "socialized medicine," earlier used effectively to defeat a proposed California health insurance program, was applied to the legislation urged by Ewing. He said in the 1969 interview that he thought the reason for the pharmaceutical industry's intense opposition to the administration's bill was a provision in the original draft that provided for price controls if drug prices became excessive. '
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Former President Clinton said Wednesday the political changes in Iraq, including parliamentary elections in January, will help bring stability to the region. Clinton met with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and a number of Danish lawmakers during his visit. The former president spoke with reporters before flying to Jordan for a poverty conference. "The Sunnis and the Shiites, the Kurds and all the various tribes can work out accommodations that will allow them to build a stable society, I think that will be good for Iraq and good for the Middle East," Clinton said at the end of a two-day visit to Denmark. "There is no point living in the past," Clinton said. "Look at where we are now. Everyone, all freedom-loving people would be better off with a genuinely representative, effective, free government in Iraq whatever your feelings are about what went on before."