FINANCES I seek immediate financial support to enable me to carry out these objectives and plans. I desire support on a wide base, rather than large subsidies from a few organizations or individuals. I require funds at once for office furniture and equipment. A lease must be signed. A small staff, including an executive secretary, research assistant, news gatherer, secretary, and mimeograph operator, must be employed. Sustaining funds are needed to pay for office upkeep and to cover cost of material distributed free of charge to Members of Congress, to the press, and to civic leaders for educational purposes. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Support for the objectives listed above is sought on the following bases: Sustaining subscriptions, including right to all material published_--- Large organizations requiring diversified services_ Individual subscriptions entitling to at least 35 releases a year__ MARJORIE SHEARON, Ph. D., $500 200 100 15 P. O. Box 4034, Chevy Chase 15, Md. JUNE 9, 1947. SUBSCRIPTION BLANK MARJORIE SHEARON, Ph.D. P. O. Box 4034, Chevy Chase 15, Md. I hereby subscribe for 1 year beginning July 1, 1947, to the Shearon Medical Legislative Service, to be established in Washington, D. C., between July 1, and July 15, 1947. I enclose my check for $ Check ( ) for the subscription indicated below: Annual rate Sustaining subscription, entitling subscriber to 10 copies of each weekly news release and to 1 copy of all material published__. Organization subscription: $500 For large organizations requiring diversified services and 10 copies of weekly news release for officers.. 200 For smaller organizations with limited needs and requiring only 5 copies of weekly news release_-_ 100 -- Individual subscriptions entitling individuals to 1 copy of weekly news release and to minor services__ 15 NOTE.-American Medicine and the Political Scene, the weekly news release referred to, will be published not less than 35 times a year-throughout regular sessions of Congress and for about 2 weeks before and after Congress convenes. Sustaining and organization subscriptions may be paid on a semiannual basis if desired. Special services will be billed on a fee-for-service basis. Prices on quantity lots of publications will be quoted as material is printed. Name [From the Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Mo., January 19, 1947] LOBBYISTS OFFER OF RESEARCH AID AGAINST HEALTH BILL DISCLOSED-GOP EMPLOYEE WORKING ON MEASURE FOR SENATORS SAYS SHE REJECTED PROPOSAL OF PHYSICIANS AGENT (By Edward A. Harris, a Washington Correspondent of the Post-Dispatch) WASHINGTON, January 18.-A letter that has been circulating around Washington for some time discloses that a lobbyist of the physicians' group fighting the Wagner-Murray-Dingell health insurance bill made an offer of free research and clerical help to a Senate committee or, alternatively, a substantial contribution to the Republican National Committee. The offer was made last April. The letter was written by the person to whom the offer was made, Mrs. Marjorie Shearon, a research employee of the Republican National Committee currently assigned to work on the health insurance bill for the Senate committee of the majority. She has an office in room 8B in the Senate Office Building. The offer was made by Edward F. Stegen, a registered lobbyist who is an associate director of the National Physicians' Committee. AUTHOR OF THE LETTER Mrs. Shearon, a volatile, quick-tempered individual of advanced years, is an implacable foe of national prepaid medical insurance. She devoted much of her letter to an attack on proponents of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill. She also assailed the propaganda methods of the National Physicians' Committee's Washington representatives. She has worked closely with Senator Robert A. Taft, Republican, Ohio, new chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, and Senator Forrest C. Donnell, Republican, Missouri, in their opposition to the bill. She broke into the news last year when the Post-Dispatch described her feverish activities in supplying Senator Donnell with stacks of "research" at open hearings on the insurance bill held by the Senate Labor Committee. Senator Taft has introduced an alternative measure which excludes the prepaid insurance feature of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell program. As Mrs. Shearon made clear in her personal letter-copies of which were sent to the National Physicians' Committee directors and a small influential group of physicians the NPC is the propaganda arm of organized medicine mobilized to defeat the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill. Its ties with the American Medical Association are intimate, although it maintains it is merely an educational body dissociated from AMA. CRITICISM OF TACTICS Mrs. Shearon asserted that the lobbying and propaganda tactics of NPC's paid staff in the capital have brought discredit to the entire medical profession, adding the the NPC directors themselves doubtless were not aware of the nature of its representatives' activities. Stegen, she related, came to her office in the Senate Office Building and "offered to furnish clerical workers and research assistants gratis to help me in preparing research material for the Senators in connection with my work on the hearings" on the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill. "I explained," she went on, “it would be improper for me to accept financial aid from any lobbying group, because there would be implicit in such an arrangement the thought or expectation that I would use my real or fancied influence with the Senators to favor the NPC at hearings, and that I would color my research findings in a way agreeable to that particular lobbying group." "Stegen," she continued, "countered by proposing that the NPC would make a substantial contribution to the Republican National Committee to be earmarked for my use. He assured me it could all be quietly arranged-or words to that effect-so that no one, not even the donor of the gift, would be the wiser". Mrs. Shearon said she "turned the proposition down cold." To clinch the matter, she declared, she telephoned the Republican National Committee while Stegen was still in her office and asked if headquarters wanted political contributions on such terms. They did not, she said. LOBBYIST STEGEN'S VERSION Stegen, asked about Mrs. Shearon's assertions, told the writer at the Willard Hotel that he was reluctant to add to the dissension, but her version was not quite correct, and he thought the true version ought to be known. "I went to see Mrs. Shearon about the various medical bills pending in Congress, including Senator Taft's proposal," he said. "She seemed very busy, and kept telling me how little clerical help she had, and how difficult it was to get things done on the small overhead allowed her. "Perhaps I was guileless, or just thoughtless, but, in the face of her complaints and with the best of intentions, I said perhaps I could provide her with some clerical help. When she brushed over this, I said maybe I could get an individual donor, not the NPC, to make a contribution to the Republican National Committee so that she would have more funds for clerical aid in carrying on her fine work in the interest of progressive medical legislation. "She telephoned her research superior in the national committee, while I was sitting there, and he agreed with her that it could not be done. That ended the matter so far as I was concerned." MRS. SHEARON INDIGNANT Mrs. Shearon said in her letter that she felt considerable indignation that Stegen had dared to make his suggestion. "I believe," she wrote, "there is not a single reputable physician who would thus have proposed, none too subtly, to purchase a lien on my professional services to Republican Senators." She said she "could not but wonder" if Stegen thought she was naive, or devious, or "downright crooked," and secondly, "whether he was expanding the influence of the NPC by making similar propositions to other persons who, in his estimation, might prove useful. Surely he knew exactly what he was doing and what was implicit in his offer." Mrs. Shearon told the Post-Dispatch that the letter, sent last August 9, stirred up a hornet's nest within the NPC and efforts were made to have her relieved of her job. The proposition had been made to her by Stegen last April, she said. "PURELY LOBBYING GROUP" "Senator Taft told me we should not get involved in medical politics," said Mrs. Shearon, "and I shouldn't be talking about it now. But the NPC tactics make me so furious. For one thing it's ridiculous for the NPC to pretend that it isn't associated with the American Medical Association, and for another, to pretend it's an educational instead of a purely lobbying group. Their men here just don't have the facts in their fight on the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill, and they resort to distortions, misstatements, and downright falsifications." Her vitriolic letter was mailed, she said, without prior consultation with Senators Taft or Donnell or anyone else. She said she used official envelopes of Senator Taft in mailing them, but bought her own stamps. Other highlights of her letter included the statement that she is completing a booklet on the proposed "nationalization" of medicine to be mailed by the Republican National Committee to every doctor and dentist in the Nation; the assertion that NPC has supplied the medical profession and the public with "sheer buncombe" in its propaganda; sharp criticism of the NPC for having "its legislative lobbying activities financed in considerable measure" by the drug industry; and the statement that the NPC's "paid staff of promoters" has done many things that would "horrify" the group's board of directors if it knew what went on. The tone of the entire seven-page, single-spaced letter reflected the researcher's firm opinion that the NPC might do well to abandon its own methods of working against the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill in favor of open, above-board techniques. She made it clear that she considered herself the most fully qualified person to expose the "dangers" of the measure. She offered her services as a speaker before medical groups, saying that while the Republican National Committee would pay her traveling expenses in whole or in part, she preferred to have the sponsoring group do so. Senator Taft, at whose instance she said she was first employed by the GOP, has approved her acceptance also of "honorarium for speeches and fees for articles." While at no time is such payment required or expected, she went on, on the other hand, “no group should think my speech will be influenced in any way by an honorarium." Mrs. Shearon, who told recipients of her letter there was "nothing official” in her remarks, is a doctor of philosophy in science, and formerly worked for 5 years with the Social Security Board and 4 years with the Public Health Service. NONPOLITICAL, NONPROFIT The full name of the NPC is the National Physicians' Committee for the Extension of Medical Service, with main offices at 75 East Wacker Drive, Chicago. Its letterhead states that it is a "nonpolitical, nonprofit organization for maintaining ethical and scientific standards and extending medical service to all the people." In recent years it has sent out tons of literature assailing the Wagner-MurrayDingell bill as "communistic." Much of this propaganda has been distributed to drug stores. In a telegraphic message to "all American physicians," dispatched January 5, the NPC urgently solicited contributions, saying in part: "November elections have provided a better climate in which to work out solutions. Lines of activity are clearly indicated. Estimated that Federal regulation of Lobbying Act may deprive us of approximately $200,000 revenue annually." Last year the Treasury Department ruled that the NPC was a "business league" and contributions to it were not deductible from taxes. [Excerpt from Rocky Mountain Medical Journal, October 1946, vol. 43, No. 10, p. 798] DR. SHEARON ADDRESSES COLORADO SOCIETY Doctors in the Rocky Mountain area have had several opportunities to hear talks by Marjorie Shearon, doctor of philosophy, research analyst for the Conference of the Minority, United States Senate. The last occasion of this sort occurred during the recent annual session of the Colorado State Medical Society at Estes Park. This meeting, incidentally, registered a total of 545 persons; among them were 35 individuals from 14 other States. Thus the audience represented a territory much larger than these Mountain States. Dr. Shearon addressed doctors and their wives at one of the evening meetings. Unfortunately, the majority of her listeners were disappointed. She spent what seemed to be a disproportionate amount of time reviewing her own personal history and responsibilities. Among her introductory comments were also several remarks and implications which the ladies interpreted as a direct disparagement of their intelligence, general knowledge, and ability to interpret the significance of the current political threat to American medicine. She seemed to overlook, for a few moments, the great part that doctors' wives have always taken in enabling and inspiring their husbands to carry on a humanitarian toil. Several comments, also, could not be interpreted as complimentary by representatives of the AMA. Our parent organization, we grant, has been on the receiving end of some adverse criticism and publicity, particularly in reference to a personality or two and some financial and political considerations. However, the AMA is still our parent organization. To it we owe more than many of us realize, and it is taking material steps to mend those ways and to dethrone a personality or two which have unfortunately harmed the institution's national respect and influence. It still deserves the loyalty of our profession and its representatives. Admirers of Dr. Shearon and the very sincere and conscientious work she has done on behalf of our profession are not likely to misjudge any palaver which falls short of her well-known standards. We are willing and anxious to blame it upon an unpredictable audience, an unruly microphone, or the altitude. But we hope that she will work on in her usual quiet and effective way, will speak to small groups guided by her keen intelligence rather than emotion, and will spare the women and the AMA. For in them we have faith-the women forever, and the AMA at least since certain airings at the San Francisco meeting and subsequent evidence of reparations. [Excerpt from November 1946 Medical Annals, pp. 558-559] THE LADY WHO KNOWS Those who attended the hearings of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor last winter and spring will recall an alert, rather intense, graying woman always seated next to Senator Forrest C. Donnell, of Missouri. She was Mrs. Marjorie Shearon, research analyst, Conference of the Minority of the United States Senate, who had been assigned the task of supplying the Senator with data and prompting him when questioning witnesses. Mrs. Shearon was not always on organized medicine's side. For a number of years she was employed by the Social Security Board. She says that 3% out of the 5 years with the Board she served under Isidore S. Falk Director of the Bureau of Research and Statistics. In the course of this association she developed a bitter antipathy for Mr. Falk's views on medical care. Since leaving 64431-48-pt. 3-7 the Government, she has made her opinions known whenever the occasion offered. Along in the early summer of 1946, Mrs. Shearon issued bulletins devoted to health legislation. These were more than factual reports. They indicated how deeply Mrs. Shearon felt about opponents of organized medicine. Medicine's cause became hers, and she had stronger convictions about what should be done than most doctors. Critical of the representatives of organized medicine, and especially those who she said were paid for the purpose of "guarding its interests," she warned that the medical profession is in "an extremely weak position in combating the forces now working for the destruction of the private practice of medicine." What she called the House of Falk, however, was the principal object of her attack. Here she laid down her heaviest verbal barrage. Unfortunately, the length to which Mrs. Shearon went to discredit Mr. Falk invalidated some of her otherwise sound arguments. Under date of August 9 she issued a bulletin in which she set forth at length her qualifications for the role in which she had been cast. These were impressive enough, and several medical societies invited her to speak to them. One of these was the Michigan Medical Society. Albert Deutsch of the loud leftist newspaper PM who baits organized medicine whenever the opportunity offers, covered the meeting addressed by Mrs. Shearon in Michigan. As usual, he went at his assignment without gloves. Mrs. Shearon, he cried, "put the finger on Fishbein and other alleged participants in this international plot," the plot being to turn the world over to "Joe" Stalin. Mr. Falk came in for special attention. "Now this fellow Falk," Mrs. Shearon is quoted as saying, "is the most dangerous man in America. He is very, very clever, and a master of intrigue." Michael M. Davis and others she considered "nearly as dangerous." Finally, according to Mr. Deutsch, she got around to Dr. Fishbein, who, she is said to have related, is often seen in Washington in company of known advocates of compulsory sickness insurance. "I don't trust Fishbein," she is reported as saying. In fact, she is said have added that Dr. Fishbein and Mr. Falk are "like two peas in a pod. I would like to see them both dumped into the river." Mr. Deutsch chided doctors present for applauding Mrs. Shearon's "flights into fantasy." As these lines are being written, an announcement of Mrs. Shearon's appearance before another medical society came to your observer's attention. She is listed on the program as "The Lady Who Knows the Sinister Implications of Socialistic Medicine." PLAYING POLITICS WITH HEALTH (By Nelson H. Cruikshank, director, A. F. of L. social insurance activities) "When I think how every labor bill was suppressed during those years in which your party maintained control and you were chairman, and when I think of the general procedure of this committee to put across that general plan, I certainly am surprised at the attitude you have taken this morning when we take the opportunity, when we have control of the committee, to present our case first." The speaker is Senator Robert A. Taft, chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. The scene is the big committee room in the Capitol where hearings have just opened on Senator Taft's charity health bill before a subcommittee. The time is the morning of May 21, 1947. Senator James A. Murray, of Montana, former chairman of the committee. has just raised an objection to the manner in which the hearings are being conducted, charging that more than nine-tenths of the scheduled time of the hearings has been assigned to organizations opposed to health insurance of the kind envisaged in the bill which he and Senators Wagner, McGrath, Chavez, and Pepper have just introduced. He has pointed out that less than 2 hours of time have been allowed organizations representing millions of people who are expected to be opposed to the proposals embodied in Senator Taft's bill. In order fully to appreciate the significance of this little drama one needs to know what has been going on behind the scenes in this subcommittee for the past several months. It is because the implications of this story have a significance that goes beyond the treatment of the health proposals that I believe the readers of the Federationist will be interested in the whole story. It started last year during the hearings on S. 1606, the National health-insurance bill. At those hearings Senator Donnell, of Missouri, submitted every |