Search Celebrity Net Worth
Random Celebrity Profile

Dr. Kildare Proposes Socialized Medicine 1940

Posted: Jan 30, 2012
Description

While not really proposing socialized medicine here, Dr. Kildare's plan in this clip would be voluntary private funding, more like an HMO today. But the AMA and conservative organizations have fought public funding and government involvement in healthcare since the 1930s. The term 'socialized medicine' as a negative was popularized by a public relations firm working for the American Medical Association in 1947 to disparage President Truman's proposal for a national health care system. It was a label, at the dawn of the cold war, meant to suggest that anybody advocating universal access to health care must be a communist. And the phrase has retained its political power ever since. This is from one of the films in the popular "Dr. Kildare" series. Kildare (Ayres) graduates from his hospital internship and is appointed assistant to the irascible diagnostician Dr. Gillespie (Barrymore). Quite a bit of the film's action takes place in the small community where Dr. Kildare grew up. While there, he and Barrymore overcome a medical crisis and score a few points for socialized medicine in small communities. This is clipped from the 1940 film Dr. Kildare Goes Home. Before the development of modern medical insurance, patients were expected to pay all other health care costs out of their own pockets, under the fee-for-service business model. During the 1920s, individual hospitals began offering services to individuals on a pre-paid basis, eventually leading to the development of Blue Cross organizations in the 1930s. The first employer-sponsored hospitalization plan was created by teachers in Dallas, Texas in 1929. Because the plan only covered members' expenses at a single hospital, it is also the forerunner of today's health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Employer-sponsored health insurance plans dramatically expanded as a result of wage controls during World War II. The labor market was tight because of the increased demand for goods and decreased supply of workers during the war. Federally imposed wage and price controls prohibited manufacturers and other employers raising wages high enough to attract sufficient workers. When the War Labor Board declared that fringe benefits, such as sick leave and health insurance, did not count as wages for the purpose of wage controls, employers responded with significantly increased benefits. Between 1940 and 1950, the total number of people enrolled in health insurance plans grew from 20,662,000 to 142,334,000, and by 1958, 75% of Americans had some form of health coverage. The debate for a public health care system in the United States has gone on for about 70 years. President Harry S. Truman was the first United States president to propose a system of public health insurance in a 1945 address. This fund would be open to all Americans, but it would remain optional. Participants would pay monthly fees into the plan, which would cover the cost of any and all medical expenses that arose in a time of need. The government would pay for the cost of services rendered by any doctor who chose to join the program. In addition, the insurance plan would give a cash balance to the policy holder to replace wages lost due to illness or injury. This program was denounced as a socialist approach to medicine by the American Medical Association (AMA) and did not pass. For more on the history of health insurance in the US, go to

URL: http://www.celebritynetworth.com/watch/3xWmAVWRU3w/dr-kildare-proposes-socialized-medicine/

Video Tags

Education, Doctor, Dr, physician, Kildare, Barrymore, socialized, medicine, 1940, insurance, fee, for, service, AMA, national, healthcare, health, HMO, history, medical, sociology, hospitalization, labor, union, employer, based, Blue, Cross, Kaiser, Group, Larry, Weiss

Discussion