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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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Part:         Session:         Page of 1143

not going to urge this to be done, because all it took was to urge that this be done, to urge Biemiller to put his attention on it, because we had the votes, and it was all doable. It was really just lack of somebody coming to him and focusing his attention on it. We could have had this whole thing done. I didn't go, and I turned out to be wrong not to, because by about this time the AMA began to organize; they realized that Truman had said he was for health insurance and they had organized against all medical bills. They were against the passage of what they called “fringe bills,” which meant that they might lead to national health insurance. Anything in medicine that the Federal Government did might lead to national health insurance, so they'd be against that.

Biemiller still had every confidence that the bills could be passed in the next session, as Congress was going to recess about the 1st of December. He said it wouldn't be worth-while to pushand press them through in the two or three weeks of the end of '49; however, by the spring of '50 the AMA was well organized and utterly against Aid to Medical Education Bill or any aid to medical education except through a weak voluntary fund to which they themselves contributed about a million dollars, when the need was certainly something between 15 and 20 million dollars just to take up the deficit of major medical schools at that time, to say nothing of the construction needs of the then





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