Doctor’s 1966 warning vs. Medicare prophetic: ‘You’ll become clerk’

Dr. Curtis Caine, 96, residing at Morning Pointe of Hixson, has defied the state-owned medical establishment all of his professional career, at the start of which he refused to participate in Medicare.

By Curtis W. Caine

JACKSON, Miss., May 1, 1966 — Dear esteemed colleague, the time has come. You will now decide whether or not you are going to be a government employee and practice socialized medicine. In making up your mind, please consider the following:

1. Medicare is part of the Social Security Amendments of 1965 (HR 6675) and was signed into law as PI, 89-97 on July 30, 1965.
2. Medicare is socialized medicine for one segment of the population.
3. This portion of socialized medicine goes into effect on July 1, 1966.
4. Socialized medicine, stripped of its deceptive whitewash, is reactionary: it is the imposition of central power and control over America and Americans in the false guise of beneficence; it is the opposite of the American way.
5. Medicare was drafted by politicians and bureaucrats. Official representatives of the medical profession were not consulted about the provisions of medicare.
6. Socialized medicine around the world has always made infinitely worse the very “inadequacies” its advocates proposed it would cure.
7. Not a single hospital was built in England during the first 10 years of socialized medicine — and only one in the first 13 years. For the last 10 years, an average of 400 doctors have left Britain annually to get away from socialized medicine.
8. This present day socialized medicine is not the wave of the future — it is not progress; it is a resurrection of the same ancient, worn out, discredited, discarded, warmed-over, old-world fraud jt has always been.
9. Socialized medicine has always, in every era and in every location, arrested progress in medical science through restrictive, burdensome, suffocating regulation, leading to loss of incentive, to stagnation and decay.
10. On February 2, 1966, the Belgian government collapsed because of it free national health service. The 9,000 doctors demanded that it be stopped or they would withhold their services. They gave as their reason that “free treatment in the state health service llowers medical standards, interferes with their freedom in treating patients, and hurts the country’s economy.”
11. The Italian Mariotti Project would nationalize all physicians. Canadian medicine is again the target of the socialist. Mexican, Swedish, German, Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, Libyan, Cuban, Polish, Bulgarian, Rumanian, and Chilean medicine is socialized, and struggling with difficulties. Russian socialized medicine is experiencing shortages. Greek socialized medicine is, this month, plagued by exposure of corruption, fraud, and abuse.
12. Since socialized medicine is political medicine, under it quality invariably deteriorates and availability naturally decreases.
13. It is inevitable that the provider will feel very little responsibility for and the recipient place very little importance on a service that is so valueless as to be “free.” Thus, both patients and doctors unavoidably stand to lose under Medicare.

Will doctors yield to scheme?

14. Charity, although dear to the donor, is lightly regarded by the recipient.
15. People almost never value anything that is free.
16. Anything that tends to lower the standards of medical care is evil. Anything that is esil is unethical and immoral.
17. Socialized medicine has been tyrannically imposed on civilizations since time immemorial; it was part of Caesar’s “magnificent society” 2,000 years ago.
18. On the other hand, the practice of private medicine is tried, proven, and time-honored.
19. America’s private medicine has produced the healthiest, Iongest-living populace in recorded history.
20. Why should physicians now approve of nationalized medicine when they have long opposed it on moral, legal and ethical grounds?
21. Socialized medicine has always proven to be demoralizing to doctors and patients.
22. Ponder this — would a patient be wise to place his life in the hands of a doctor who has lost his self-respect for practicing government medicine? Then again, perhaps the patient would be even less wise if that physician were of the type who had not lost his self-respect for doing so.

Finest medicine in world

23. Admittedly, American physicians have not attained (and obviously never will attain) their perennial goal of conquering all disease. But they have come closer to doing so, and are still more diligently making more progress in that direction now, than any other group in the world has done presently or at any time in the past.
24. By all yardsticks, medical practice in the U.S. is the finest in the world because it has not been socialized.
25. Government produces nothing, therefore it has nothing to “give” to anyone except what it has first taken from him or someone eke (minus a sizeable brokerage fee).

Legal plunder, phony guarantees

26. Medicare is legal plunder. It promises the possession of someone else (the doctor); it promises something the government does not possess (medical knowledge).
27. It is a mark of moral bankruptcy for one group (legislators) to arbitrarily guarantee the professional ethic of a second group (doctors) to a third group (the citizens).
28. Only doctors can practice medicine. No one else is equipped by training and experience to do so.
29. And Jesus answering said unto them “They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick” (Luke 6~31). My Lord said sick people need a physician — not HEW, not Medicare.
30. The Bauer amendment adopted by the AMA house of delegates in 1961 puts it this way: “The medical profession is the only group which can render medica! care under any system.”
31. Wilbur Mills, the author of Medicare, states that it will not work without the willing cooperation of doctors.
32. Therefore only doctors can impose socialization on the medical profession: by being a party to it — by participating.

Total nationalization is certain

33. On the other hand, now that PL 89-97 has been enacted, only doctors can prevent the socialization of medicine: By declining to be a party to it — by not participating.
34. If physicians permit medicare for those over 65 to operate now by participating, it is only a matter of a short time until all patients and all doctors are totally nationalized.
35. If doctors don’t firmly stand on principle now, they will be pitifully, ignominiously begging HEW for a few more pennies per visit in the near future. Socialized medicine in Japan offers an indelible example.
36. Those over 65 are being led to believe all services will be provided under Medicare. But Part A and Part B of Title XVIII provide only limited services. For instance, annual check-ups, the first $40 under Part A, the first $50 under Part B, vaccinations, etc. are not covered.

Medicare is government charity

37. There are approximately 18.5 million persons in the USA 65 and over.
38. AIl over 65 (except certain criminals) are eligible to receive “benefits” under Part A of Title XVIII of PL 89-97. This includes an estimated 6 miliion over 65 who have never been under Social Security and thus have paid no Social Security “taxes.”  For this 6 million, Part A of Medicare is pure charity.
39. Private insurance companies estimate Part B will cost $10 per month. So 70 percent of Part B is pure pubIic charity, the funds coming from general revenues. Yet Part B is called “insurance,” the $3 is called a “premium,” and anyone 65 or over may sign up.
40. In the main, Medicare is public charity.

Massive dole ahead

41. Physicians should be suspicious of and fear there is deception in an inconsistent system of “social security” that on the one hand (Part A) ceases to collect fluctuating “premiums” and begins to pay changeable benefits at age 65: but on the other hand (Part B) begins to collect fluctuating “premiums” at age 65 for unsure, changeable benefits in the unknown future.
42. Under Title XIX, all recipients of welfare, regardless of age, will be eligible for Medicare by 1970. There are in excess of 200,000 on welfare in Mississippi alone. It is estimated that Title XIX of the present law, without amendment, will cover 40 million people by 1975.
43. And of course, all of this is only the beginning. On February 25. 1966, Sen. Harrison A. Williams {D., N.J) introduced S 2953, and Rep. John E. Fogarty {D., R.I.) introduced HR 12976 which would provide presentIy uncovered diagnostic services, and for all persons over 50.

Doctors will be blamed as system fails

44. On March 1, 1966, the president asked for $6 billion to $8 billion for a hospital modernization program outside of Hill-Burton to provide the anticipated increase in facilities which will be required by Medicare.
45. While money is squandered by the bureaucrats in administering medicare, doctors participating in medicare will be required to be economical. Cheap treatments and cheap prescriptions are to be given preference, HEW employed referees will set the standards — not the patient’s doctor.
46. If you participate in Medicare, any praise or commendation will go to the bureaucrats, but its failures will be blamed on YOU.
47. When the public becomes disgruntled with the poor quality and lack of availability of care under socialized medicine, it will vent its wrath on DOCTORS, not Wilbur Cohen or HEW.
48. HEW, the Iiberals, the bureaucrats, and other socialists will never admit the inherent fraud of socialism or their own guilt in perpetrating it, but will, instead, divert the blame to DOCTORS for the predictable shortcomings of socialized medicine.

If system is voluntary, should we join?

49. Non-participation is not a strike against patients. A strike is the withdrawal of services. Nonparticipating physicians will individually continue in the future, as they always have in the past, to expend every effort in benefit of all individuals who seek their services.
50. Non-Participation is not a strike against Medicare. Section 1802 specifically states that doctors may choose not to “undertake to provide , . . services” under PL 89-97, In other words, you do not have to practice under Medicare.
51. Section 1801 of PL 89-97 prohibits the imposition of Medicare on a doctor who declines to be a participant.
52. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits involuntary servitude.
53. In Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution the central government is granted no authority by the citizens through their states to engage in the business of medical care or insurance.
54. The only portion of PL 89-97 that is involuntarily imposed on physicians is compulsory inclusion in Social Security and the mandatory payment of Social Security taxes.
55. The socialization of medicine in the United States is not intended as an end in itself. It is planned as a means to an end — the total socialization of America.
56. The socialization of America will complete the socialization of the world.

Bismarck: Fight communism with communism

67. Total world socialism is the avowed aim of the communist conspiracy.
68. Lenin stated that the keystone in the arch of the socialist state is socialized medicine.
69. “Liberals”, “moderates”, “intellectuals”, New Dealers, Fair Dealers, New Frontiersmen, Great Societiers, socialists, the scholars, one-worlders, communist dupes, communist fronters, communists; and all leftist organizations including the ADA, CFR, AFL-CIO, UN, UNESCO, CPUSA, etc. foster socialism, including socialized medicine.
70. Many advocates of socialism today vow they are anti-communists.
71. In 1883, when Chancellor Otto von Bismarck initiated the first “national compulsory health insurance,” he adopted communism “to fight communism.” And since then, 64 countries have done the same.
72. America is daily being forced to adopt more and more communism — and each time we are told that the reason is “to fight communism.”
73. Some persons (including some doctors) cooperate in socialism because they accept the solemnly made statement, “It is inevitable.” The truth, however, is that this oft-repeated untruth is, in reality, propaganda conceived and promoted by the socialists themselves to get otherwise good people to be accomplices in the socialist destruction of the market economy which originally was America.

‘Inevitable’ collectivism

64. Some will participate in medicare because they abhor the thought of being considered out of step with modern times, or of being old-fashioned, or of opposing the majority. Paul the Apostle, by divine inspiration, wrote in Romans 12:2, “Be not conformed to this world.”
65. In early 1948, 84 percent of the doctors in England voted 9 to l against socialized medicine, but in the next few months threats, abuse, misrepresentation, and accusations caused them to surrender.
66. After World War II, when the Labor government of Australia imposed socialized medicine, 90 percent of the doctors refused to participate. As a result the labor government was defeated and the law never went into effect.
67. So, you see, socialized medicine is NOT inevitable.
68. This controversy over socialized medicine is only one, but a most important, battle in the war by the socialists to collectivize America and thus the world.
69. Social schemes are instigated by a small group of grasping men for base purposes — not humanitarian love of neighbor or the welfare and health of the nation, as deceitfulIy claimed.
70. Contrary to what we have been told all of our lives, it does not take two to make a fight, doctors (and all Americans) are having war waged against them unilaterally. A war not of their choosing, which they have not provoked, and in which they have not volunteered to fight — but a war for their (and their country’s) enslavement, nevertheless. The socialists are the aggressors. Repeatedly they have slapped our face and bloodied our nose by insulting us with accusations that we are not practicing good medicine. They have put shackles on us legislatively. Come July 1, they will tie our hands behind our back with restrictions. And still many doctors refuse to realize or admit that THEY are in a fight.

Feds prod insurers to surrender

71. Doctors (and all Americans) must realize this war of aggression for their enslavement IS going on — and if they wish for themselves and their children to be free — THEY MUST FIGHT WIN — NOW.
72. Medicare, though it is called such, is not insurance. There is no contract. There is no policy wherein the provisions are stated, It is whatever “the secretary (of HEW) may direct” at any given moment. Section 1803 provides that persons participating or not participating in Medicare may have other health “insurance.” This provision is necessary to give lip service to the basic doctrine of freedom of contract. But the action by many insurance companies (undoubtedly at the behest of HEW) cancelling their health policies as of midnight June 30, 1966, threatens to give that forbidden monopoly in this area to the social planners of Medicare anyway — through intentionally staged default.

Health Insurers cancel policies, complicit with feds

74. In some instances, these are “noncancellable” policies! But the fine print allows the company to do so since all policies in the group are being cancelled.
75. These companies are thus assisting HEW to coerce eligible persons to sign up for Medicare. This is irresponsible and immoral collusion with evil.
76. By this action the insurance companies (with certain notabIe exceptions) have forced those 65 and over to sign up for Medicare or face the prospect of having no health protection. Was the collusion voluntary or involuntary on the part of the insurance companies? If involuntary, I can find no provision in PL 89-97 authorizing the government to issue such a regulation. If voluntary, did the insurance companies conspire with the government (1) in exchange for the plum of being appointed fiscal agent for Part A or Part B; and/or (2) to get rid of their burdensome poor risk of old folks?
77. That insurance companies are acting as co-conspirators in their own (and their country’s) demise is reprehensible since through their holdings of stocks, bonds, mortgages, and loans insurance companies constitute the backbone of the country’s financial integrity.

What’s a patriot to do?

78. That Medicare will destroy private insurance and private medicine should come as a surprise to no one. It was planned and promoted for just those reasons. That is its purpose.
79. So our advice to our patients should be: “If you have private health insurance, keep it; if you do not have private health insurance, buy it; if your company has cancelled your policy (many companies have), demand that they reinstate it (several companies have); if you have not signed up for Medicare, don’t; and if you have signed up for Medicare, withdraw.
80. Patriotic constitutionalists oppose socialism in all its forms.
81. Non-participation in socialized medicine is legal, at long last agreed to by the AMA.
82. Even Wilbur Cohen (undersecretary of HEW) on August 7, 1965, stated non-participation is legal.

Nonparticipation = keeping up quality of care

83. Non-participation is ethical. Section 5 of the AMA principles of medical ethics states, “A physician may choose whom he will serve”.
84. Section 6 of the principles of medical ethics of the AMA advocates non-participation: “A physician should not dispose of his services under terms or conditions which tend to interfere with or impair the free and complete exercise of his medical judgment and skill or tend to cause a deterioration of the quality of medical care.”
85. Non-participation is honorable. By not participating in Medicare a physician is upholding the constitution, preventing the communization of the world, and proudly maintaining the integrity of his profession.
86. The AMA’s Bauer resolution of 1961 advocates non-participation: “The medical profession *** will not be a willing party to implementing any system which we believe to be detrimental to the public welfare.”
87. Thus a physician who declines to participate in socialized medicine is acting in the highest traditions of the noblest of the professions.
88. Participating will be easy. It will be supinely “going along” and it will assure that physician of “getting along.”
89. On the contrary, not participating will be hard. It will take courage, conviction, stamina, and dedication. All manner of pressures and hindrances will be imposed on the non-participant to “whip him into line.”
90. It is legal for an individual to advocate non-participation.
91. It is legal for an organization to advocate voluntary non-participation. Several county medical societies and at least five state medical associations have endorsed non-participation.

Bureaucrats have 100% authority

92. PL 89-97 gives the appointed secretary of HEW and his designees almost unlimited authority over participants (doctors, patients, hospitals, etc.) in Medicare.
93. Do you believe that any jackleg bureaucrat, any egghead social planner, any compromising politician, any pay-off appointee, with no medical training and bound by no code, knows more about medicine or how to care for patients than doctors who are bona fide professionals with seven to nine years of qualifying training?
94. George Washington said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

Doctors become clerks

Curtis Caine, 96, has fought for liberty in the medical field for more than 50 years, having warned every doctor in Mississippi in 1966 that participating in Medicare would enslave them. (Courtesy 92.7 NoogaRadio)

96. Under Medicare the good doctor will be equalized with the mediocre doctor. There will be less incentive to be the best doctor possible.
97. Under socialized medicine, the Department of HEW has patients and the Department of HEW has doctors. But doctors do not have patients; and patients do not have doctors.
98. The medicare doctor will merely be acting as an agent for the Department of HEW.
99. By participating in socialized medicine, physicians unilaterally become hired clerks — employees of appointed political bureaucrats.
100. All of the above is only a drop in the bucket of what will come to those who participate in Medicare. Doctor Philip R. Lee of the Palo Alto Clinic, the new Assistant Secretary of HEW, says that to take care of the increased number of patients expected when Medicare goes into effect on July 1 “Doctors are just going to have to work harder.” He also favors “allowing a nurse or a technician to go directly into the first or second year of medical school.”

Frantic PR effort for enrollees

100. Ry the end of 1965, 57 percent of those eligible for Part B of Medicare had not enrolled. The bureaucrats frantically put on an all-out propaganda drive of deceit. Threats of the deadline of March 31 were utilized. Most agencies of the government, entertainment stars, governors, and many others participated.
101. On January 31, 8 million people — that‘s 46 percent of those eligible — had not enrolled. 1.1 million dad actually signified they do not want to enroll – God bless ’em. Efforts by the social planners were intensified.
102. It has been admitted that at least $2.5 million has been spent through the Office of Economic Opportunity to pay “volunteers” to personalIy call on those over 65 to persuade them to sign up. For instance, the rate of pay “credit” set by the QEC for these Medicare salesmen in Waldo County, Maine was $11 per hour for physicians, $9 per hour for dentists,

$8 per hour for attorneys, $5 per hour for accountants, $3 per hour for secondary school teachers, $2.50 per hour for elementary school teachers, and $2 per hour for horses — yes, that’s right — HORSES.

Weak enrollment at launch

103. The cost of mailings to those over 65 urging (even threatening) their acceptance of Medicare is in excess of $1.5 million.
104. With all of this, by March 8, 1966, only 79 percent of eligible persons had signed up for Medicare.
105. Much to the consternation of HEW officials, and in spite of all efforts, one week prior to the original deadline to sign up for Part B of Medicare (March 31, 1966), 4 million of the 18.5 million eligible persons had still not signed up.
106. So, the cry for the socialization of medicine comes not from the “neglected”, “needy”, “mistreated” citizens at large, genuinely in need of help, but from the socialists in and out of medicine, It is not for the succor of the destitute, but to sucker us all into collectivism.
107. The politicians and the bureaucrats desire the nationalization of medicine. The people are not demanding it.
108. Socialized medicine, being the opposite climate from that in which American medicine has reached such heights, is, thus, a regression for America, not an advance.
109. With its unswerving history of having always arrested advances in medicine, socialization has only condemnation and failure to offer as its credentials.
110. Those physicians advocating non-participation are not opposed to progress, as accused. On the contrary, since socialized medicine is a retrogression, the non-participant is in the forefront of medical progress.

Take your stand now on “Choose you this day whom ye will serve” – Joshua 24:15.

Curtis Caine in 1966 warned fellow physicians to avoid Medicare, as it would enslave them. His letter is a prophecy that came true. (Courtesy 92.7 NoogaRadio)