Opposition to the AALL Bill
While the American Medical Association (AMA) favored the bill in 1915, its views reversed by 1920.
"The present methods of disease prevention and cure are expensive, and sickness is most prevalent among those who are least able to purchase health....A system of sickness insurance is proposed as the most feasible single remedy. The right of the federal government to tax industries in a sickness insurance system has been recognized since 1798, when the law taxing registered vessels for the support of the Marine Hospital Service was passed." "...there are unmistakable signs that health insurance will constitute the next great step in social legislation. Experience has shown that an adequate health insurance system should distribute the cost of sickness among those responsible for conditions causing it and thereby lighten the burden on the individual." |
"...when we approach the subject of sickness insurance we encounter economic problems so entirely different from those encountered in standard insurance propositions that the very name of insurance is scarcely applicable in the field of so-called health insurance. In this connection, it is well to note that the so-called experts of the American Association for Labor Legislation have for at least six, and probably ten, years been struggling with the problem of trying to devise a work able bill, and that to date they have made a complete failure. This in itself should be at least presumptive proof that there may be something radically wrong with the materials with which they are trying to work." "Resolved, That the American Medical Association declares its opposition to the institution of any plan embodying the system of compulsory contributory insurance against illness or any other plan of compulsory insurance which provides for medical service to be rendered contributors or their dependents, provided, controlled or regulated by any state or the federal government." |
The American Federation of Labor and private insurance industry also opposed the bill, stating that compulsory health insurance takes away the right for people to choose the manner in which they spend their money on health insurance.
"There are certain species of compulsory social insurance that by their mere statement carry with them the conviction of their self- evident necessity and justice, into which the element of depriving the people of rights can not enter — such as workmen's compensation and old-age pensions. But when compulsory health insurance and compulsory unemployment insurance are proposed, the question arises at once, what are the conditions and regulations to be imposed by the Government to regulate the conduct of the supposed beneficiaries."
-Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor
1916