(Page 9 of 23) - National Health Insurance and the Politics of Race in the United States, 1945-52 authored by Boychuk, Gerard.

Boychuk

any policy initiative is likely to have generated a knee-jerk backlash among segregationists. The
NAACP was the focus of pro-segregationist opposition to the civil rights program and few
Southern congressional representatives would have willingly risked appearing to be on-side with
the NAACP.

Secondly, as a result of the increasing reliance of the Democrats on the support of black

voters, the NAACP position limited the administration’s latitude to pursue compromises which
might been acceptable to the AMA. For example, the NAACP was “unequivocally and
unalterably opposed” to any public health insurance or voluntary prepayment plan which granted
significant control to the AMA: “More than civic groups, affiliates of the American Medical
Association have been resistant to efforts to obtain relaxation of restrictions against Negro
physicians and segregated practices against Negro patients. […] The National Association could
not have confidence in the equitable administration of a program which would be controlled by
an organization with the record of the AMA in respect to the Negro.” (United States, 1947: 1094)
This position was restated in congressional hearings in 1949. (United States, 1949a: 506)
Considering Democratic efforts to court the black vote combined with the antipathy of the
NAACP to the AMA, it does not seem surprising that the approach of non-Southern
congressional Democrats, some senior administration officials, as well as President Truman
himself towards the AMA were, as discussed below, often deliberately antagonistic.

Committee for the Nation’s Health (CNH)

The CNH, the organizational locus of support for national compulsory health insurance,

also emphasized the link between national health insurance and issues related to racial
discrimination. A report drafted by a CHN official and a former NAACP organizer outlined the
effects of low private insurance coverage, shortages and maldistribution of health professionals,
and “racial discrimination which aggravates all other factors.” (NYT, 1949g) The report
concluded that “a national insurance plan was necessary ‘to equalize the differences between the
states and localities,’ and to ‘lessen the effects of racial discrimination.’” (NYT, 1949g)

Framing Opposition to National Compulsory Health Insurance

While there is little evidence that opponents of national health insurance, at least at the

national level, deliberately played upon the politics of race, the language used in debates over
national health insurance carried specific racialized meanings, especially in the south. Certain
arguments against national health insurance were likely to have been particularly effective as a
result of this linkage.

Much has been made of the devastating effect to which symbolic terms of the debate –

especially the term “socialized medicine” -- were put. However, the tagging Truman’s health
plan as socialized medicine by various opponents – especially the AMA -- was not a particularly
original or ingenious strategy. Most other progressive social legislation at the time wore the
same label -- the easiest and most common approach to opposing any progressive social
legislation.

As Starr notes, anti-socialist and anti-communist sentiment does not adequately

explain the divergent fate of various programs thus labeled: “Otherwise one would not have
expected the liberalization of Social Security in 1950. The rejection of health insurance stands
out as an exception to the postwar pattern of rising social welfare expenditures in the United

Other legislation, proposed at the time, which was alleged to be steps to socialize America included the Economic

Stability Act of 1949, the Brannan plan for subsidizing farm incomes, (C.R., 1950: 2307-9), federal aid to education,
and the Truman civil rights program (C.R., 1951: A4087)