Analysis: an intriguing 1960s' campaign saw future US president Ronald Reagan attacking 'socialized medicine' on a vinyl record
During the recent US presidential debate, US president Donald Trump accused Joe Biden of advocating "socialized medicine". The term is regularly used by current Republican Party members as a pejorative for universal healthcare, but it entered popular discourse back in the 1960s following an intriguing campaign featuring Ronald Reagan named Operation Coffee Cup.
The campaign was orchestrated by the American Medical Association (AMA) to undermine John F. Kennedy's plans to introduce public health insurance for older Americans. At the time, only just over half of America’s over-65s had hospital insurance.
Operation Coffeecup marshalled the Woman’s Auxiliary of the AMA to its cause. Members were sent campaign packs containing, amongst other items, a letter template and a recording (in the form of a vinyl LP) of Ronald Reagan decrying "socialized medicine". The doctors’ wives were charged with drumming up support for the campaign by organising coffee mornings where they would play the LP to "stimulate friends and neighbors" to write letters to Congress objecting to the bill and the "menace" of socialized medicine.
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From the Reagan Foundation, Ronald Reagan speaks out against socialized medicine in 1961
The letter to the hosts accompanying the information pack declared: "American Medicine has given the Woman's Auxiliary this opportunity to prove its value as helpmates in this vital campaign. Let's demonstrate we can accept this challenge and meet it successfully".
The wives were warned that the LP was not for general, public consumption and certainly not for commercial broadcast. It was vital that the letters appeared to be written by concerned individuals rather than part of an orchestrated campaign when they landed on the desks of senators and representatives. They needed to appear to embody the general public mood on the subject and not that of a lobby group. The hosts of these coffee mornings were advised to have paper, pens, envelopes and stamps at the ready so attendees could write their letters there and then while "in the mood".
On the recording, Reagan describes Medicare as seeking to extend socialism by stealth arguing that "it's a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his [the doctor’s] pay and pretty soon your son won’t decide when he’s in school where he will go or what he will do for a living".
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From PBS News Hour, what the US presidential debate had to say about healthcare plans
The future president warned "one of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it". The term "socialized medicine" endeavoured to position the Medicare debate within a Cold War framework to trigger ordinary Americans’ considerable concerns about the threat posed by communism.
The campaign was largely successful, inundating senators and representatives with objections and leading to the defeat of the bill in the Senate in 1961. However, following JFK’s assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency and pushed through the Social Security Act of 1965 which established Medicare, albeit a watered-down version of the original. By 1968, 95% of older Americans had coverage.
The campaign also helped launch Reagan’s political career. He would register as a Republican in 1962 and deliver an address before the Republican National Convention in 1964 which established him as a rising star of the right. In this speech, he again referenced "socialized medicine" calling on the audience to "realise that the doctor's fight against socialised medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients". Reagan would return to the theme of "socialized medicine" and the perils of "big government" frequently throughout his political career.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
