Medicare Quotes

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.

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Sen. Milward Simpson (R-WY).
08/08/1965 | Full Details | Law(s): Medicare

I have always maintained that if a program is to be successful, it must... be voluntary... based on need and must not be financed through a payroll tax.

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Sen. Thruston B. Morton (R-KY).
08/08/1965 | Full Details | Law(s): Medicare

We oppose the Medicare program because foreign experience has shown that socialized medicine is harmful to both the doctor and the patient, primarily to the patient. He suffers most.

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Harry E. Northam, director of the Association of American Physicians.
04/11/1965 | Full Details | Law(s): Medicare

...we cannot stand idly by now, as the Nation is urged to embark on an ill-conceived adventure in government medicine, the end of which no one can see, and from which the patient is certain to be the ultimate sufferer.

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Rep. Durward Hall (R-MO).
04/08/1965 | Full Details | Law(s): Medicare

We are going on the assumption that this is not socialized medicine. Let me tell you here and now it is socialized medicine.

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Rep. James Utt (R-CA).
04/08/1965 | Full Details | Law(s): Medicare

[There is] no demonstrable need for the program.

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Paul D. Hill, International Association of Health Underwriters. May, 1965.
317304/01/1965 | Full Details | Law(s): Medicare

[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.

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Dr. Clifford H. Keene, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan.
317104/01/1965 | Full Details | Law(s): Medicare

...the result of such programs in other countries had been over utilization of facilities and rising costs, and that as emphasis shifted from quality to cost, as it must under a publicly financed program, a deterioration in the quality of care is inescapable.

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Dr. Donovan Ward, President, American Medical Association.
317204/01/1965 | Full Details | Law(s): Medicare

It is socialism. It moves the country in a direction which is not good for anyone, whether they be young or old. It charts a course from which there will be no turning back.

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“Senator Carl Curtis (R-NE), 1965.
317701/01/1965 | Full Details | Law(s): Medicare

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.

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Ronald Reagan
10/27/1964 | Full Details | Law(s): Medicare

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