In 1961 I left a lowly job in medical research, and went
looking for another one. An ad for “research
assistant” posted by the American Medical Association looked promising, so I answered it.
It turned out to be my first editorial job , and certainly
was the strangest. I had fallen down the
rabbit hole into an unreal world. At weekly staff meetings, one dormouse-like little
old man always fell asleep after the first few moments. Another man invariably
came up with bizarre suggestions for editorial projects, a bit like the Mad
Hatter. Every Friday we had a farewell
party for whichever coworker was making their escape. One of the secretaries,
who looked scarily like Morticia of the
Addams family, sneaked around on rubber-soled shoes and seldom spoke to anyone.
Another secretary began making odd
statements about conspiracies going on in the organization. For a long time people
simply assumed she had uncovered something sinister in the course of her work,
but finally one of the M.D.s in the department realized she had a brain tumor. Altogether it was a weird place.
From today’s point of
view, one of the oddest characteristics of the AMA was their rabid opposition
to Medicare. The costs of medicine for the elderly (and everyone else) were
becoming unaffordable, but the AMA officials insisted that passing Medicare
legislation would doom the country. Actor Ronald Reagan, who in a few years
would be the governor of California, made a film for the AMA in which he proclaimed
that passage would lead us down the path to socialism (almost equated with Communism
at the time). In the Journal of the
American Medical Association ( JAMA) and its other journals, AMA officials
insisted that it would destroy the high-quality medical care Americans were
receiving. Luckily for all of us, President
Lyndon Johnson made it a high priority, and Medicare became a reality in 1965.
Can any sane American now imagine life without Medicare?
Even the most right-wing Republican is likely to rely heavily on it after the
age of 65. Conservative opposition today has more to do with cutting the budget
for it, which would be bad enough.
My late husband went through numerous hospitalizations and
surgeries before dying of heart disease and diabetes. In his last few years his
medical bills came to more than a million dollars. Being a Navy employee, he
was well insured; but even with the help of Medicare and a good Medigap plan, the
financial cost was enormous for us. We used up our retirement savings, and
after his death I had to sell our home. But I have survived and continue to
live decently, if frugally. Without Medicare I cannot imagine what my life
would be today.
