DR. SPOCK AND NATIONAL HEALTH CARE

I’ve been stirring memories as I look through memorabilia as I near 50 years of news reporting. I came across two long interviews with Dr. Benjamin Spock from 1967.

Much of it dealt with his anti-war activity. I asked him naturally about the opposition he encountered over his anti-Vietnam positions. But I also asked him, “Did you take much abuse over your Medicare stand?”

I don’t remember the nature of his position but his response reveals even today the bitterness in the fight for health care reform.

His answer:

“Yes, I think that I angered my colleagues and friends at the medical center (University Hospitals) more about that than I did about peace. I think that they think of peace views as rather crazy. But medical, I think a lot of conservative doctors felt (it) was a direct threat to them, going to impair the whole, if not, destroy the whole basis of private practice.”

We have come some way since then but still have a long way to go.

It’s amazing how much you forget of the past. At least I do. The interviews covered 20 single-spaced pages of typewritten questions and mostly answer from Spock. He had the patience and kindness to sit through these long conversations.

Another aspect that caught my attention in scanning the pages was his bitter feelings toward President Lyndon B. Johnson. It might not seem strange since Johnson did escalate the Vietnam War. However, there was a more personal reason for Spock. He had backed Johnson’s candidacy.

“I felt betrayed and outraged when Johnson suddenly escalated in February 1965. It was a wrong policy to start with and then to help and elect a President whose campaigned on the basis that he is not going to escalate and then turns around and does escalate seems to me was outrageous,” said Spock.

I can still hear the passion in his voice.

Raised in a staunch Republican family, Spock became someone who thought for himself and was ready to pay the consequences.

A person to be emulated. Where are such citizens today?