This program could destroy private initiative for our aged to protect themselves with insurance against the cost of illness….Presently, over 60 percent of our older citizens purchase hospital and medical insurance without Government assistance. This private effort would cease if Government benefits were given to all our older citizens.
From a commercial standpoint in a competitive marketplace [safety devices such as the turn signal and the seat belt must be optional] until a very high proportion of the customers select the item or unless there are compelling reasons for standard installation.
Our industry, along with others, created an Industry Committee on Quantity Declaration which filed a report with the National Conference Committee on Laws and Regulations. The National Conference on Weights and Measures then adopted a model regulation on package labeling which industry now supports. This regulation basically protects the public by requiring a prominent quantity declaration, yet it does not discourage research, innovation and improvements, nor does it limit the consumer’s freedom of choice.
[The Medicare bill would] set up a health care program which served little or no necessary social purpose and which would be a direct, unwarranted and completely unfair intrusion in private enterprise.
Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business.
[Health labeling on cigarette packs] would interfere with freedom
The broadly and vaguely worded administrative and enforcement provisions of [the bill] would authorize extensive governmental intervention in labor-management relations far exceeding the purported evils at which this legislation is allegedly directed. Such provisions, moreover, effectively give the Secretary and his agents an unlimited license to destroy the wage structures which both management and labor have worked for years to develop….The exercise of such unlimited powers could not but grievously and irreparably injure labor management relations throughout the Nation.
[T]he act will tend to cause labor unrest and labor disputes and disrupt collective bargaining agreements. In virtually every industry of any size, [employees] are represented by a collective bargaining agent which has negotiated an agreement with the employer covering rates of pay and conditions of employment.
The principal of equal pay for equal work sounds…simple [but]….We cannot ignore the variables inherent in our private enterprise system, or give all discretion in resolving them to some single group or agency such as the Department of Labor, if we are to continue as free men and women.
[Federal control of medicine would ] anesthetize [American Medicine] the proud symbol of our competitive system.
