ber "The ultimate test of all AAPS No, powerful as they all are indi

actions shall always be the public vidually and collectively as pavers

interest." And second, we must ac- .. of the Road to Serfdom, we have
curately and intelligently appraise an even more powerful if less tan-
the strength and importance of gible opponent.
those tangible and intangible forces Our most powerful and ominous
which oppose us. What is the iden- opponent fortunately is also our
tity actually of our greatest oppon- strongest potential ally. He i ~ ~ e
ent in our struggle to defeat the inertia of every American physiCian
forces of regimentation, compul- who does not inform himself of the
sion, coercion and despotism? sinister significance of Socialized
Our greatest opponent is not Medicine and who does not throw
,Murray, Wagner, Dingell, and his weight against it in whole-
'()iliers of their ilk Our greatest hearted, voluntary, intelligent, per-
and most powerful opponent is not sistent opposition. He is your col-
rsadore Sidney Falk and his army league and mine. He is Doctor
()f workers in the Bureau of Re- Inertia.
search and Statistics in the Federal Until that day when a substan-
Security Administration. Our tial majority of American Physi-
greatest opponent is n?t ~ i k e Davis cians have voluntarily chosen to
and his almost unlimited funds affiliate themselves personally with
from the Rosenwald Foundation. AAPS, we must keep our eye on
'Our greatest opponent is not the the Bull's eye; we must keep our
bosses o t e . . ., e . . o ., f h C I 0 th A F f L eye on the grey blurred lethargic
not Governor Warren of California unthinking Bull's eye--the coun-
or President Truman, not Com- tenance of our greatest, yes, our
munism or the International Labour only really vital opponent, . our
Organisation. It is not even the greatest potential ally, our fnend
rank growth of the weeds of Pater- and colleague who has not soberly,
nalism planted so widely in our sincerely and enthusiastically affi:-:ed
d h f his signature to an AAPS apphca- social structure unng t e reign o
'Franklin the Great. tion blank.
Publicity and Propaganda in the
Government Agencies and Bureaus
Congressman Forest A. Harness
Chairman, Subcommittee on Publicity and Propaganda
of the Committee on E:rpenditztres in Executive Departments
in the House of Representatives
Presented at the 1947 Annual Meeting of the
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
I appreciate your cordial and gen-
erous reception. Our committee has
uniformly received warm support
from the medical profession in all
parts of the country, and your pro-
fessional journals have been most
encouraging in their analysis and
interpretation of our investigation.
Since you are all familiar with
the aims and general scope of the
sub-committee's work in ferreting
out government, propaganda paid
for with the taxpayers' money, I
shall explore with you tonight one
special segment of that inquiry
which has not yet been incorpor-
ated in a formal report to the House
of Representatives. I refer to the
closely- knit inter-bureau propa-
ganda organization which exists in
Washington for the obvious pur-
pose of agitating for socialized med-
icine, or state medicine, in other
lands. The Bureau of Research and
Statistics in our own Social Secur-
ity Board in Washington is the
5
world headquarters of socialized
medicine. The world movement is
all paid for by the American tax-
payers-and none of it ever has
been authorized or approved, as
such, by the Congress in its appro-
priations measures.
As if it were not enough for our
medical bureaucrats to be trying to
force socialized medicine upon the
140-million people of the United
States, they are also forever busy
with conferences, round tables, aml
special missions to advance social-
ized medicine in Japan, China,
India, Burma, Indo-China, or Cey-
lon. During the last three years
they have sent special survey mis-
sions to South America, Hawaii,
England, and New Zealand.
That the American people know
nothing of these enterprises is a
fact of fundamental significance to
our committee. And a fact of almost
equal significance is that our medi-
cal bureaucrats resent any inquiry
from Congress as to what they are
up to, or how much they are spend-
ing in these overseas promotional
campaigns.
A third fact of great significance,
to my mind, is this: while many of
these conferences relate primarily
to matters of health service and hos-
pital administration, the arrange-
ments and programs are almost
entirelv in the hands of lay bureau-
welfare workers, sta-
tisticians, actuaries, specialists in
playgrounds, unemployment insur-
ance, workmen's compensation or
collective bargaining. Rarely, if
ever, does a qualified, recognized,
and experienced member of the
medical profession find a place on
these overseas missions. Yet every
mission has some aspect of social-
ized medicine as a part of its agenda.
I submit that these are matters of
fundamental significance to the
American people. All these over-
seas missions and enterprises are
supported largely by U. S. funds.
Many of the thinkers and planners
who throw these conferences to-
gether all around the world are full-
time employees of the U. S. Gov-
ernment. Their salaries range from
$4,000 to $10,000 a year. They are
supplied with office space, office
equipment, secretaries, telephones,
stationery-all paid for by the
American taxpayers. They get free
postage for all their propaganda
material, which is distributed liter-
ally by the ton from Washington
every year. Their reports and find-
6
ings are printed free of charge by
the Government Printing Office.
Yet all this work is carried on
under a cover of secrecy and in-
trigue in the Social Security Board
and the U. S. Public Health Service
-to the point that every inquiry
for information must be first regi-
stered, approved and cleared by the
top level bureaucrats. In the sense
that the taxpayer pays all the bills,
this is all the public's work. Yet
every project is shrouded in almost
military secrecy until it is ready in
tina! form for the propaganda liter-
ature from the Government Print-
ing Office. Plans and projects still
in the formative stages are simply
none of the public's business, as our
medical bureaucrats. view their
work.
The next important international
meeting to discuss extension of so-
cialized medicine is scheduled to be
held in New Delhi, India, October
27 through November 8. This con-
ference is called the Preparatory
Asian Regional Conference. The
agenda includes "proposals looking
toward the development of broad
social security programs in the
countries of Asia." Nominally, this
conference is arranged and directed
under the auspices of the Interna-
tional Labour Office, a remnant of
the old League of Nations. The
significant thing about the confer-
ence is that while the headquarters
of the I. L. 0. are in Montreal, Can-
ada, the announcement of the New
Delhi meeting comes to us from
Washington, D. C., where a branch
of I. L. 0. is maintained at 734
Jackson Place. Through that office,
the work of the I. L. 0. is closely
integrated with the studies and proj-
ects of the Social Security Board.
A number of persons formerly on
the staff of the I. L. 0. are now full-
time Government workers in the
Social Security Board; and a few
former employees of the Social Se-
curity Board are now on the staff
of the I. L. 0. To put it another
way, these two offices in Washing
ton are but branches of the same
enterprise. I. L. 0. is the interna-
tional or world arm of the Social
Security Board; and the Social Se-
curity Board, through the Bureau
of Research and Statistics, is but
the American operating unit of the
I. L. 0.
I should make it clear that there
is no thought on the part of our
investigating committee to inquire
into the operations and programs of
the International Labour Office.
That is a matter far beyond the
scope of our authority. Neither may
we challenge the funds which are
being spent by the United States
Government in support of I. L. 0.
That program of international co-
operation has been duly approved
by Congress.
But what does interest our Com-
mittee is the extraordinary system
of working arrangements which
exists between the Social Security
Board and the I. L. 0. in this mat-
ter of socialized medicine. Our
investigation has convinced me that
7
the Social Security Board is in fact
the supply base, so to speak, from
which flow most of the basic studies
and research reports which power
the I. L. 0. campaign for socialized
medicine in other lands. And this
conclusion is confirmed by the fact
that members of the Social Security
staff usually are the U. S. delegates
to the I. L. 0. meetings overseas.
It will be a difficult and tedious
matter to establish, through careful
audits, just how much of the funds
appropriated by Congress for the
domestic work of the Social Secur-
ity Board are actually diverted to
the world programs of the I. L. 0.
But I may say that such an audit
is now in process, and that a de-
tailed work analysis and project
study within the Bureau of Re-
search and Statistics of the Social
Security Board will be available for
the consideration of Congress be-
fore the next appropriation bills are
considered for Social Security oper-
ations in the fiscal year beginning
June 30, 1948.
You have all read in your news-
papers recently the story of the
special Health Mission to Tokyo.
I shall discuss this mission briefly
here, merely because it seems to me
to illustrate the whole scheme of the
Social Security Board's operations
in the world-wide campaign for
socialized medicine. A little more
than a year ago a federal civilian
employee in Washington (one
Stanchfield) was detached tempor-
arily from his job to go to Tokyo
to make a preliminary survey of
social security and health needs.
Upon his return to Washington
early this year, Mr. Stanchfield pro-
posed a general health mission to
Tokyo. His proposal was presented
directly to Mr. Arthur J. Altmeyer,
Commissioner of Social Security.
Next, on March 5, 1947, Mr.
Altmeyer proposed the mission in
a formal communication to the War
Department. In that letter, Mr.
Altmeyer designated the particular
individuals who should make up the
mission, and then went further to
suggest that William H. Wandel,
Chief of the Program Division,
Bureau of Unemployment Security,
be appointed chief of the Social
Insurance Division of the Public
Health and Welfare Section of the
Supreme Command for the Allied
Powers in Tokyo. It is perfectly
apparent from the letters we have
taken from the War Department
files that the personnel of this mis-
sion and the planning of its pro-
gram originated in and was dictated
from the Social Security Board in
Washington.
Up to this point there had been
no hint that the proposed Health
Mission had been requested or
urged either by General MacArthur
or any responsible Japanese source.
The suggestion came first from Mr.
Stanchfield, who had been sent to
Tokyo from Washington for that
particular purpose.
Next, we found a letter, under
elate of June 14, 1947, from Mr.
Wandel in Tokyo reporting directly
to Mr. Isadore Falk in Washington
on the progress of the work in
Tokyo. In one revealing passage of
this letter, Mr. Wandel said:
8
"V\' e think that our need is for
someone who is primarily not so
much an economic analyst as one
yerscd in health insurance. Health
insurance is the major field of so-
cial security in Japan . . . Perma-
nent revision requires amalgamating
National Health Insurance with
Health Insurance on a compulsory
basis."
When the Tokyo Health Mission
tinally was named, it comprised two
men from the Public Health Serv-
ice, one from Mr. Falk's Bureau,
and one from the Federal Housing
Authority. This mission departed
for Japan on August 28, this year,
with the understanding that Mr.
Altmeyer and possibly Mr. Falk
would follow when the work had
been sufficiently organized in Tokyo.
Because this instance offers a
shocking demonstration of bureau-
cratic intrigue in violation of the
purposes and intent of Congress, I
have brought the matter to the at-
tention of the House Appropriations
Committee, with the suggestion that
when the next budget comes up
from the Social Security Board and
the Public Health Service, all those
engaged in spreading Socialized
Medicine around the world be
ken from the public payroll-unless,
of course, Congress shall determine
to support such world propaganda
with funds specifically allocated for
that purpose.
In my letter to Chairman Taber
of the Appropriations Committee,
I made eight specific charges against
the Tokyo Health Mission. I wish
to summarize them here, because
they are the nub of our case against
the Social Security Board and the
U. S. Public Health Service in re-
lation to all this propaganda sup-
porting Socialized Medicine.
My charges against the Tokyo
Health Mission are as follows:
(I) That the health mission to Japan
is romposed entirely and cxcln-
si\ely of men long. identified in
the public record as advocates
and proponents of Socialized
Medicine not only in the United
States but. throughout the world.
(2) That the real purpose of this
mission is to lay the groundwork
for a system of Socialized Medi-
cine in Japan.
(3) That the scheme for such a mis-
sion originated in the Division
of Rese;_trch and Statistics i;1 the
Social Security Board in \il/ash-
ington, and nowhere else.
(4) That the nominal request for the
mission was engineerPd through
the General Headquarters of thr
Supreme Commandn in Tokyo
by federal employees sent fr;m
\VashingJon for that particular
purpose.
(5) That General lhug;bs :\lac-
Arthur docs not fan1r__:_ancl docs
not apprme-any plan to estab-
lish compulsorv Socialized M edi-
('ine in Japan.
(fi) That the dispatch of this missior.
to Tokyo for the purpose indi-
cated in Mr. \'Vandel's letter to
Mr. Falk under date of June 14,
1947, is a gross misuse of public
funds.
(7) That the real purpose of the mis-
sion is not to assist Japan in
working out her basic problems
in health and welfare, but to
force upon that country a com-
9
pulsory :;ystem of Socialized
.\Ieclicine.
\ 1l) That although the questions here
involnd are of a health and
medical nature, the Surgeon Gen-
eral of the United States Army
was not consulted in reference to
the problems involved.
I deem it inappropriate for fed-
eral employees, at the expense of
the American taxpayer, to travel
throughout the world preparing or
assisting in the preparation of legis-
lation to be adopted by foreign
countries when similar legislation,
long pending, has not been approved
by the Congress of the United
States.
It is interesting also to note how
closely the Social Security Board's
program to assist the development
of socialized medicine in Japan fol-
lows the general outline published
on October 1 by the International
Labour Office for the forthcoming
Asia conference at New Delhi,
India. Regarding the general ob-
jectives of the New Delhi confer-
ence, the preliminary hand-book, or
work guide, summarizes general ob-
jectives in this language:
"The report suggests the gradual
devcloptrent oi a public medical
serYice in the Asian countries
\\'hich would he freely ayailable to
tl"""' \lh> need it thev Jiyc
in urban ur rural and whether
they are workers or dependents."
This, of course, is a bald pro-
posal for the nationalization of all
medical services, to be paid for out
of the general revenues rather than
by special payroll taxes.
So the socialized medicine plan
for Asia, as now put forward
through the I. L. 0. goes even fur-
ther than the Wagner- Murray-
Dingell Bill for the United
The plan for Asia precisel_y
the master plan for sociahzed
cine as developed in Commumst
Russia, where all medical services
are the direct function of the gov-
ernment, with all costs paid directly
from the general funds of the
Treasury.
It will be interesting to watch the
final report and recommendations
of the Tokyo Health Mission, to see
whether it follows the direct gov-
ernment-payment plan put
by the I. L. 0. in the New Delhi
agenda, or the special payroll tax
plan incorporated by Altmeyer, Falk
and Cohn in the Wagner-Murray-
Dingell Bill. In other words, the
Health Mission to Tokyo must make
a choice on the Japanese plan. Will
that choice fall to the Russian side,
with direct medical payments from
the general o,r towa_rd the
Social Secunty Boards versiOn of
socialized medicine under compul-
sory health insurance?
Another fact of fundamental sig-
nificance, as I see it, is that the gov-
ernment propaganda which
>:ocialized medicine for the Umted
States presents a shamefully
torted picture of what voluntary m-
surance, medical service plans, and
hospital pre-payment plans have ac-
complished during the last 10 or 15
years. To read the government
literature on our health needs, one
would !!ain the impression that
there had been no change in the in-
10
surance picture in this country dur-
ing the last quarter-century.
This flagrant distortion of . the
picture is a crime against the natr?n.
To have the government agenci:s
urging their programs on the basis
of conditions which have not actu-
ally prevailed in this country
the 1920's is not only an alarmmg
abuse of governmental powers, ?ut
a and challenging negation
of the entire philosophy of Ameri-
can public service.
The federal of com-
pulsory health insurance insist
the problem of pre-payment
cal care plans cannot be ad?:mis-
tered effectively by the traditional
enterprise system of insurance.
They ignore the fact,. as reported
by the Health and Accident Under-
writers Conference, that more than
42.000,000 persons already are cov-
ered by various forms of . health
;md accident insurance. Dunng the
decade. 1934-44, the number of
policies in the United States m-
creased five-fold, from roundly 8-
million to 40-million. In 1920, ther:e
were only 4-million policies of this
type.
There are more than 400 com-
panies offering such policies today,
and total premiums in this field of
insurance now average about $50-
million a month, or $600-million
a year.
In addition, another group of 5-
million persons are enrolled in vari-
ous types of pre-payment medical
care and hospital service plans.
Combining these two groups of
insurance arrangements, we find
that approximately SO-million peo-
ple already are protected by various
forms of health and accident insur-
ance, as compared with only 4-mil-
lion thus protected by their own in-
dividual arrangements in 1920.
What, then, is the basis of the
contention by the advocates of so-
cialized medicine that the insurance
problem in the health field cannot
be handled by the existing insurance
system? The fact is that, on the
basis of individual coverage, con-
siderably more than one-third of the
American population already has
solved the problem of emergency
medical and hospital expenses
through the medium of insurance,
individually arranged and paid for
directly from month to month as an
established item in the family
budget.
In various forms, as determined
by the state insurance laws, this type
of protection is now available in all
of the 48 states. As actuarial ex-
perience develops, these plans are
being improved from year to year.
Intense competition between more
than 400 different insurance com-
panies tends constantly to offer the
insured more comprehensive pro-
tection and to eliminate abuses
which impair the function of insur-
ance principles in the field of health.
Concealing or ignoring such
fundamental developments in the
insurance field during the last quar-
ter-century, our medical bureau-
crats present an utterly distorted
11
and unreal definition of the problem
they presume to alleviate.
This systematic distortion is a
somewhat universal characteristic of
collectivist propaganda methods.
Every argument for state-ism must
begin with the assumption that no
other solution is available, for only
a spirit of hopeless defeatism ever
can impel men to give up the rights
and privileges of freedom in favor
of Government regimentation.
Another fact of basic significance
revealed in our committee explora-
tions is that socialized medicine, his-
torica!Iv, has always been linked
pretty closely with dictator forms
in Government.
The brand of dictatorship makes
no difference--Communism, Fas
cism Nazism, Socialism-all are
alike: in that they enforce a system
of State Medicine.
\Vhatever the name of the dicta
torship, or whatever the pattern of
the particular brand of collectivism
in a given country, the system of
socialized medicine is always pretty
much the same. It is based on com-
pulsion, and is generally adminis-
tered by a nationwide system of po-
litical manipulation. The physicians
and surgeons themselves usually are
forced to a subordinate position in
the determination of policies and
programs. Now, if the medical pro-
fession and all our hospitals can be
taken over by the Federal Govern-
ment and forged into a new and gi-
gantic health bureaucracy, then it
would only be a question of time
until \i\Tashington likewise moved
into the field of education, religion,
the press, the radio.
Freedom soon would be in total
eclipse.
That must not come to pass in
mighty America, the last great cita-
del of freedom and liberty on the
face of the globe today.
Ours is a great responsibility to
hold aloft the bright torch of free-
dom and honest representative gov-
ernment. And it has been most en-
couraging to know that we have the
great body of the American medical
profession standing behind us in
this effort in Congress.
Our figures from the Budget
Bureau show that Government ex-
penditures for publicity and propa-
ganda increased from $28-million in
1941 to $74,829,467 in 1946.
Now everybody in Washington
recognizes that certain information
services are an essential part of any
institutional operation. But Con-
g-ress insists that there is a clear line
of distinction between legitimate
information services and those ad-
ditional operations which tend to
build up public opinion in favor of
more projects, broader programs, or
federal invasion of new spheres of
public service. It is primarily the
latter operations which our sub-
committee seeks to itemize as to cost
and scope. It is my contention that,
at least, the people are entitled to
know how much they are spending
to educate themselves to more
spending.
It seems to our committee to be
a proper function of the Congress
12
to determine whether the diversion
of public funds from legitimate
purposes to purely propaganda pur-
poses for socialized medicine, does
not, in fact, constitute a criminal
violation of the law.
And on this point, I may say that
the Federal Bureau of Investigation
is giving that qtJ.estion some serious
study at the moment. As you know,
vve advised the Attorney General,
Mr. Clark, last June what we dis-
covered about the Htalth Work
Shops, and we have since been in-
formed that some of the vouchers
are in the hands of the FBI for in-
vestigation.
All this federally-financed activ-
ity for Socialized Medicine heads
up in the Bureau of Research and
Statistics in the Social Security
Board.
Our Committee investigators
have found in that bureau a veri-
table nerve center of socialized-
medicine propaganda for the entire
world.
Mr. Isadore S. Falk is the Direc-
tor of Research and Statistics in the
Social Security Board. He has been
in the Government service for some
twelve years. He has always been
noted for his militant and aggres-
sive advocacy of Socialized Medi-
cme.
Our committee, of course, does
not challenge the right of any citi-
zen to hold whatever views he may
wish on any subject of political or
economic policy.
But we are interested that funds
appropriated by the Congress, for
public administration shall not be di-
verted to a world-wide system of
propaganda calculated to advance
socialized medicine the world
around.
Such operations, until specifically
approved by the Congress, are posi-
tively illegal. And our committee
will not rest until they are uprooted
and stamped out of the federal
picture.
Americans must never fall into
the attitude that all sound opinions
are made in Washington and handed
down full-fashioned to the people.
That is the way of dictatorship.
Public Opinion must be main-
tained in its free and virile state-
in full harmony with the great
American tradition of liberty.
If we do that by stamping out
Government propaganda at its roots,
13
then we shall have rendered a great
service, not only to medicine, but to
the whole cause of liberty and free-
dom the world around.
We all know that freedom is not
free.
We all know that bureaucratic
power feeds upon itself-and upon
the rights and privileges and liber-
ties of the people.
If we are to support and defend
liberty and constitutional govern-
ment in America, we must begin by
keeping clean and undefiled the well-
springs of public information from
Washington.
Government propaganda poisons
these wells of public information.
Government propaganda IS a
method of dictators.
Our purpose will be to uproot and
destroy government propaganda
wherever we may find it.