Medical Care for All the People

THE PRESENT WAR emergency has given the problem of social security renewed significance, and the Wagner–Murray–Dingell bill endeavors to merge the existing state insurance schemes into a uniform federal system. It proposes at the same time to broaden the scope of social insurance so that it will include health insurance. The bill is violently attacked by those groups who stand for unchecked free enterprise and oppose all forms of government planning and coordination, and also by the groups who stand for unlimited states’ rights and object to any form of interference by the federal government. They overlook the fact that uncontrolled free enterprise has led the country, and not only ours, into depressions and wars, and also do not see that with the present means of transportation the country has become much more uniform than in the past. If the Wagner–Murray–Dingell bill is defeated, as it is likely to be, since our present Congress is very conservative, we may expect another similar bill in the near future because the need will remain as acute as ever. . . .