Doctor's Orders

American pressure groups usually watch Presidential elections from the grandstand. Because they welcome a bipartisan membership, and because their lobbying must go on no matter which party is in power, they tend to be stingy with their endorsements. The only exception comes when, as in the case of labor unions this year, the group's issue is clearly the property of one party and not the other.

That is why many doctors were upset by the form letter they received from prominent members of the American Medical Association a few weeks ago. Warning that if Adlai E. Stevenson becomes President, "The stage is all set to socialize medicine," the missive urged doctors to vote for Eisenhower and to urge the same of their friends and patients.

If Adlai Stevenson's views on government and medicine were the same as Aneurin Bevan's, there might be some cause for the doctors' trepidation. But Stevenson has said, "I am against the socialization of the practice of medicine as much as I would be against the socialization of my own profession, the law." When the Governor suggested that the Democratic convention make no mention of compulsory health insurance in its platform, his party obliged. Clearly, then, the AMA doctors fear no strangulation of free enterprise in the medical field no matter who is elected.

The AMA has been extremely successful in squelching legislation in the medical field for the last ten years. Perhaps it is this flush of victory that makes the group jump out of the grandstand and start campaigning. Undoubtedly, the AMA would feel safer with Washington Republican. Ever since it opposed Woodrow Wilson's proposal for extended small pox innoculation as "socialism," most of its targets have been Democratic proposals.

But whatever the reason, these AMA doctors have overstepped the rightful arena of pressure group action with this letter. Doctors enjoy a respected position in our communities, and their personal advice is respected. That the AMA wants its members to expend this respect over a false issue is shameful, but is a typical example of what the group will do to stagnate the nation's health program.