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Show Senior Citizens Attack AMA For Medicare Stand An organization of 600,000 older persons today attacked the American Medical Association for opposing a government plan to help the aged pay hospital bills, while doctors collect millions mil-lions of tax dollars from government gov-ernment programs. "The American Medical Association's As-sociation's record," said the Nation Na-tion Council of Senior Citizens, "shows the AMA believes what's good for doctors is not always good for their patients." The National Council co-sponsor co-sponsor with its 700 member clubs of more than 30 mass rallies ral-lies throughout the United States next Sunday is spearheading a campaign for President Kennedy's Ken-nedy's program for health care for older persons. The President made a national radio and TV address at the Madison Square Garden rally in New York City. In an eight-page pamphlet released recently entitled "Operation "Oper-ation Negative The Record of the American Medical Association Associ-ation on Social Legislation," the National Council said: "The AMA is not consistent. By its actions, it apparently contends con-tends that direct Federal assistance assist-ance is OK for doctors, but that a program that would help the aged pay their own hospital bills is bad for their patients. This simply does not make sense. Somewhere along the line, the AMA has developed a split personality." per-sonality." The pamphlet states: Doctors throughout the country coun-try are borrowing Federal funds to expand their offices or to buy new medical equipment; Under the government's medicare medi-care program for civilian dependents depen-dents of servicemen, some private pri-vate physicians near military bases collect as much as $10,000 a year; And, the public health service is spending close to $10 million a year in direct payments to physicians phy-sicians and hospitals for medical services to merchant seamen and American Indians. The AMA, it is reported, goes along with these programs and does not condemn the government's govern-ment's program of direct financial finan-cial assistance providing (Continued on page 8) which would lead to totalitarianism. totalitarian-ism. Bitterly opposed extension of Social Security benefits to the permanently and totally disabled as "a serious threat to American medicine." Was vehement in its opposition oppo-sition to the elimination of the means test in the crippled children's chil-dren's program. Tried to stop grants for maternal ma-ternal and child welfare programs pro-grams aimed to reduce the death rate among mothers and children with the charge that the program was "unsound policy, wasteful, extravagant, unproductive of results, re-sults, tending to promote communism." com-munism." The National Council added that the AMA once did everything every-thing it could to oppose voluntary volun-tary health insurance and there were even medical societies which opposed the Red Cross blood bank on the grounds that "the allotment of blood and its products by the American Red Cross should ultimately lead to the effect of having the Red Cross practice medicine." Senior Citizens Attack AMA For Medicare Stand (Continued from page 1) ; grants or loans for hospital ' and nursing home construction and for medical research in pri-l pri-l vate institutions. "The AMA has found that the . use of Federal funds for these purposes has in no way resulted , in government interference with ; the medical profession or in government gov-ernment control of medicine," says the National Council. "Physicians "Phy-sicians and hospitals are free to practice as they always have been in the past. "Yet the AMA is waging a campaign against President Kennedy's Ken-nedy's plan for health insurance for the aged through Social Security Sec-urity a plan that, although government - administered, is self-financed by the people, and offers the best solution to a problem prob-lem that has become widespread in our country today." Documenting the AMA's long history of illogical opposition to government programs advancing advanc-ing social welfare, the pamphlet says the AMA: Denounced Social Security as "a compulsory socialistic tax" Among books recorded recently re-cently for America's estimated 350,000 blind persons as a Talking Talk-ing Book is the best seller "Dr. Zhivago." It was recerded at the American Foundation for the Blind in New York. The finished book, which will be distributed free of charge through 30 regional re-gional libraries for the blind as a tax supported program administered ad-ministered by the Library of Congress, will be on 22 double faced discs, each playing 27 minutes. |