Remarks at the Dedication of the Ellenville Community Hospital, Ellenville, New York.

Mr. Chairman, Congressman Resnick, Senator Javits and Senator Kennedy, distinguished members of the New York delegation, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen:

Mayor Glusker, I am delighted that I should have received this invitation to come here and visit with your people this evening.

I am especially grateful to you and your city for this generous display of typical New York hospitality. And I and my family shall long remember it.

I am particularly honored that Senator Javits, a man with whom I have served in the House and Senate for many years, one of our most respected Senators, a true progressive and a devoted American, and the senior Senator from New York, is here, and what really pleases me is that a Republican Senator would be here on the platform with a Democratic President.

But today, we have been dealing with the problems of not Republicans or Democrats-and both of us have plenty--but we have been dealing with the problems of Americans. And we are all Americans before we are Republicans or before we are Democrats.

We have been talking about pollution--and what we can do about it. We have been talking about educating our children and building their minds--and what we can do about it.

We have been talking about the health of our citizens, the care of their bodies and building strong constitutions--and what we can do about it.

We have been talking about beautifying our land and bringing peace to the world-and what we can do about it.

On all of those things, both Senator Javits and Senator Kennedy are there in Washington, not as Republicans or Democrats--as are other Members of Congress from both parties here tonight--but they are there as Americans.

I am very pleased that Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a young man for whom I have the deepest respect, an extremely able and effective legislator, should have joined us this afternoon, after he and Senator Javits and the other Members of the Senate passed a very remarkable bill, the demonstration cities bill, through the Senate.

They came here to make these appearances with us and they are already, I expect, about an hour late to engagements that they had before they knew I was coming here.

So I want to express to all the Members of Congress present my sincere gratitude for their coming here and being with us.

All of us deplore cruelty to animals, but Joe Resnick not only deplores it, he does something about it.

His new humane treatment bill, already passed by both Houses, is a most unusual achievement for any first--term Congressman.

I share your pride in your Congressman. He has one of the finest records of any man in the House of Representatives.

I am also happy and proud of the other members of the New York delegation who are here with us tonight. And I want to now present Congressman Abraham J. Multer of the Brooklyn district--Congressman Multer, will you stand up?--Congressman John M. Murphy of Brooklyn and Staten Island; Congressman Theodore R. Kupferman of Manhattan, and Congressman Jonathan B. Bingham of the Bronx.

All of these men have been my friends through the years, particularly the man I am about to introduce now--Congressman Seymour Halpern of Queens.

Have I missed anyone that came with us?

Congressman John Dow is here. Now he has really made a sacrifice. All of the people of his district turned out to see us over there. And I knew that he was hospitable, but I didn't think he would leave those warm people in his own Congressional district and come on over here to see us have a good evening.

But I thank you just the same, John.

Jim Hanley and Sam Stratton are also here. They have been with us through the day.

Mr. Lonstein and friends, this hospital that we have come here this evening to dedicate is not only a modern, new facility, it is a temple to life and health. It is a monument to all the goals that men can attain when they work together for the common good.

This hospital was built at a cost of more than a million dollars. More than a third of its construction money came from the Hill-Burton hospital funds provided by your National Government.

And I think most of the people here this evening, the men and women, the boys and girls, can remember when this was not possible.

Twenty years ago, the Hill-Burton program was only an idea that was shared by a few men. But it was started with the same kind of faith and the same kind of spirit that we have had displayed among us all day.

Someone asked me one time what my political philosophy was. And I said, "Well, I am a free man first, an American second, a public servant third, and a Democrat fourth--in that order."

And in that order Senator Hill, a Democrat from Alabama, who has done more for the health of the people of this country, I guess, than any single man, and former Senator and Justice Burton, a Republican from Ohio, joined together to share this idea and to bring these hospitals all over our land.

As always, there were doubters, doubters who just said it couldn't be done. They said the Hill-Burton program would stifle local initiative. They said it was socialistic.

Well, you and I know they were wrong.

We know that Hill-Burton has added more than 8,000 facilities to serve 4,000 communities. This particular facility is number 6,635. And no one can estimate just how many lives have been saved and how many bodies have been healed and how many pains have been tempered by this movement

But a great many have, and I am thankful for every single one of them.

Last year your Congressmen and the Johnson administration declared that the time for Medicare is now; that from now on, our older citizens should get hospital care-not as charity cases, not on an admission slip from their son-in-law, but as insured patients.

We had talked about this wonderful idea for 20 years. We had all appeared in public presentations throughout the Nation for more than 20 years.

But tonight we are no longer talking about what we are going to do. We have done it. It is no longer a plank in a platform, it is a fact in the community.

Well, the doubters rose up again. They forecast that if Medicare passed, if the Congress ever followed the President and enacted Medicare, that medicine in this country would be ruined, that doctors would be regimented, that free enterprise system would be wrecked.

Well, they said most of those things about social security. They said them about the 25-cent minimum wage when we first started that. But, tonight we are taking stock.

Now what really did happen? Despite all of this, one critic put us on notice that on July 1st, when it took effect, the first day of Medicare, and I quote him, "A line of patients will stretch from Chicago to Kansas City."

One estimable magazine predicted "a mammoth hospital traffic jam." There were lots of frightened people.

But those in your Government organized a round-the-clock crisis team and put them in a center in Washington, to receive the flood of complaints that were forecast that would flow, in order that they could deal with the coming national hospital emergency.

I called a dozen different meetings of Cabinet officers, medical officials, officials of the American Medical Association, of the hospital associations throughout this country. They came to the White House to help us deal with this crisis--which didn't happen.

Nothing went wrong. There was no crisis for the crisis center to meet.

In 1 month not one single call came into that crisis center.

And I said to our very beloved and able Secretary of HEW, John Gardner from New York, and a Republican, incidentally--I didn't know it until I had offered him the job. I was talking to him and it just happened to occur to me I had better ask him because I was going to send his name up to the Senate. And he kind of blushed a little bit, I guess because when I asked him what party he belonged to--a Democratic President was going to appoint him--he said "a Republican." And I said, "That is just what I need."

Thirty-five percent of the Republicans voted for me. I hope he was one of them.

But I said to John Gardner, "The men on that crisis staff are the most underworked men in all America." So, we closed the crisis center before Congress investigated us.

In the next 60 days, more than half a million Americans--500,000--will have already entered hospitals for treatment under Medicare.

In this first year we expect that more than 9 million hospital bills and 30 billion doctor bills will be paid under your Medicare's insurance program.

More than 6 million children and needy adults have begun enjoying benefits under other portions of this most remarkable law.

The doubters predicted a scandal; we gave them a success story. They predicted an emergency; we gave them efficiency.

Where are the doubters tonight? Where are the prophets of crisis and catastrophe? Well, some of them are signing their applications; some of them are mailing in their Medicare cards, because they now want to share the success of this program. And we will welcome them all with understanding to the big tent.

Because I can't come to see you very often, tonight I am going to ask your indulgence while I talk about some of the things that are on my heart. And I, at this moment, want to tell you another blessing that I think Medicare brings this country of ours.

It used to be, in many places in our land, that a sick man whose skin was dark was not only a second-class citizen, but a second-class patient. He went to the other door, he went to the other waiting room, he even went to the other hospital.

But tonight that old blot of racial discrimination in health is being erased in this land we love. Under this administration's Medicare program, the hospital has only one waiting room, it has only one standard for black and white and brown, for all races, for all religions, for all faiths, for all regions. And I think that is a victory for all of us; that is a victory for America.

The day of the second-class treatment, the day of the second-class patients is gone. And that means that we are reaching a new day of good health for the people of America.

So I have come here tonight to say that we are ready to practice what we have preached so long. And that is this: that good medical care, good medical attention is the right of every American citizen.

Mr. Rayburn, who served 50 years in Congress, said that when he first went there he went to Senator Hayden, who had come in the Congress when Arizona came into the Union in 1912. Mr. Rayburn asked, "How do you get along in Congress?" Senator Hayden said, "Well, the first thing you have got to learn is that Congress is just like back on the farm. There are two kinds of horses, work horses and show horses."

Well, we have been work horses in this Congress, and I don't say just the Democrats in the Congress. I say the Democrats and the Republicans and the independents and the whatnots. I say this Congress, the 89th Congress, is the best Congress, I think, that has ever been assembled--and it is made up of members of both parties. I say that with full knowledge that if some of these Republicans get a Democrat breathing down his neck, he is liable to quote me on that. And I expect him to, because it is true.

In the last 3 years I have signed 19 different landmark laws in the field of health that the Congress passed upon our recommendation--19. And before this session ends I plan--with the help of my friends in the New York delegation, members of both parties--to sign a few more health laws.

So I say to you tonight, the light from these great measures has just begun to shine.

We are interested in building better minds, we are interested in building better bodies, we are interested in building a better country and a more beautiful countryside.

Thomas Jefferson said that he would like to have on his tombstone that he had been the father of the University of Virginia. And when all is said and done, I want our period to be remembered as the time when we built better minds and educated our little children; when we built better bodies and took care of our sick; when we loved health and education and food so much that we wanted everybody to have a little of it; when we prized freedom so high for ourselves that we thought other human beings in the world were entitled to it also.

We were a little slow in living up to our responsibilities in World War I. And Hitler had already gone through Poland and gobbled up liberty-loving people before we got there in World War II. But we learned our lesson then and we want to live in a world of 3 billion people, and we would like for that world to be made up of 3 billion free souls, free people.

In 1900, 8 years before I discovered America, 1 baby in 7 every year died. And for Negroes the toll was just double, just twice as high because their skin was black.

Today, only 1 baby in 40, not 7, 1 baby in 40 dies before the age of 1.

Early in this century a newborn child had a life expectancy of less than 50 years. He had only 33 years if his skin were colored. Tonight, a child can expect to live 70 years or longer.

Think about how many more years of happiness, pleasure, and satisfaction he has with his grandchildren.

If you want to look at it selfishly and get your dividends, think about how many more years he can pay taxes.

In the face of such progress, why shouldn't we be satisfied? Can't we be satisfied? Well, the answer is no, we are not.

With so much unfinished business in health, we just must not be satisfied. When our infant mortality rate is not the lowest in the world and until it is the lowest in the world, you and I have a big job to do. And we are going to get at it and we are going to do it.

I am trying to speak in terms that we can all understand, and all remember, and all do something about. When a Negro man lives 7 years less than a white man; when 4 times as many Negro mothers die in childbirth; when twice as many Negro babies die in their first year; when there are not enough doctors, not enough nurses, not enough hospital beds--you and I and all America have a job to do and we are going to do it.

You haven't been hearing that every year by Presidents for the last half a century. But you are going to hear it every week as long as I am President until we do have enough.

Because it is not any more difficult to get hospitals like this to take care of all of our health needs than it was to get the elementary education bill passed. That is the most difficult job I ever undertook.

And if I may just tell you a little story off the record to loosen this thing up a little bit and let us all enjoy ourselves, I'll tell you a very, very amusing incident.

The B'nai B'rith wanted to give me an award because they were very pleased at the civil rights program that I had enunciated and bills I had passed. And so I finally, reluctantly, agreed to go out of the White House out in town to a hotel to receive this award.

And I went out and I made, I thought, the greatest speech of my life. And they stood and applauded me and took my picture and gave me the award. And I came on back home and worked hard the next morning-and picked up the afternoon paper that night and I saw "B'nai B'rith Denounces Johnson's Education Bill." And I was rather distressed.

And then the next thing I heard, some of the Catholics were upset because they couldn't get the books and the regulations in the bill and because of provisions in the bill that were obnoxious to them. And so we talked to a few Cardinals and we worked very hard on the matter and we worked out an arrangement where everybody could get a peep at the book a little bit and we got them adjusted. And I thought, "Now if this line just holds for a few hours, maybe I can get a roll call."

And lo and behold, a friend of mine down in Texas--a very prominent doctor who is leader of the Baptist faith--heard about what had happened and the Baptists, they were going to get--the Catholics were going to get to see some of these things. He called me up, called up one of my assistants, and said, "What in the world has happened? Has the Pope taken the President over?" My assistant said, "No one has taken him over. The President is out swimming."

"Well," my friend said, "I've got to talk to him on the phone." It was in the middle of the day. And my assistant said, "Well, I can go out and interrupt him--he is swimming."

"What's my President doing swimming in the middle of the day with all the work he's got to do?"

"Well," said my assistant, "he's out there with Dr. Graham."

And he said, "Which?"

My assistant said, "Dr. Graham."

He said, "Is that - our Billy?"

Well, it was "our Billy," one of the great religious leaders of this country.

So before the sun went down that night we had the Cardinals and we had the Rabbis and we had "our Billy." And they were all aboard--and the greatest educational measure ever to be considered by any legislative body became the law of the land.

And to you working people and to those of you who look to the working people to protect you, let me say tonight that we are spending this year, appropriating this year, $10 billion more--that is twice the entire Herbert Hoover budget when I came to Washington--than was being spent 2 1/2 years ago by the Federal Government for just health and education. And don't tell me you can't get results with $10 billion!

Now we have proved that we can do that job if our visions are bold enough, and our plans are big enough, and we have enough patience to talk to all the groups and let them see that united we stand, divided we fall.

Ten years ago we faced an urgent crisis of overcrowded mental hospitals. A national effort in research and treatment, led by our Federal Government's National Institute of Mental Health, sharply reduced the number of patients in all of our mental hospitals.

Twelve years ago, 34,000 children and adults were struck down by that terrible disease, polio. Our great President bore the scars of that disease for many years before Franklin D. Roosevelt, of the State of New York, was taken from us. But a national effort killed that killer and the number of polio victims this year is practically zero. And you can't compute the value of that in your bank account!

Pneumonia, typhoid, dysentery, and cholera once stalked thousands of citizens into their graves. But tonight, because of a national effort, here in America with national leaders telling the people the truth-the truth will make you free--the threat of these diseases is drastically reduced.

But we cannot and we must not stand still and we are not going to stand still.

So I would like to ask this Nation tonight, through you, to lay down a challenge to the future: Let us declare that the American goal in the next 10 years is modern, competent, medical care for every person of every age, whatever his means.

And let me repeat that: Let us declare that the American goal in the next 10 years is modern medical care for every person, of every age, of every race, of every religion, of every region, whatever his means.

Our goal in the next 10 years is for every child to have a normal life expectancy of 5 years more than the child born this year. Can you imagine a more satisfying or gratifying experience than to have played a part in adding 5 years to the life expectancy of every child born this year?

Our goal is for the United States to have the lowest, repeat, - lowest infant mortality rate in all the world. Our goal is for the child that is born in America tomorrow or tonight, to no longer fear smallpox, or measles, or diphtheria, or whooping cough. Our goal is for children to no longer suffer the heart damage that is caused by rheumatic fever or to fear tuberculosis as a serious threat to health and happiness.

And our goal within the next 10 years, announced tonight, is to reduce, to cut the kill rate, the death rate, from heart disease, cancer, and stroke by 300,000 men and women each year.

And even with prices rising some, wages have risen more, and nearly everyone has a job. Unemployment is .practically gone. And just think about how much better it is going to be in this country if we stop killing those 300,000 each year and let them pay taxes a few years longer.

Now I believe that we can meet these goals. I believe that we can bring to our people not only a longer and a healthier life, but a more prosperous life and a happier life as well.

No nation at any time has ever enjoyed a higher standard of living with more of its citizens working at better pay with better hours, with better working conditions than our Nation enjoys tonight--but we are not satisfied. We are going to make them better.

Now we bear very great burdens at home and I am not unaware of the burdens that we bear around the world.

We have more than 40 alliances that require responsibilities and sometimes require that we keep our word. We have alliances with some nations that are nations of a few thousand; some nations that are only a million or two million; some nations like Vietnam have 10 to 15 million; and some nations in the NATO Alliance have many millions.

But whether our word is good or bad is not determined by the number of people in a nation. Brown men love freedom just as much as white men. Once you give your commitment and once you announce your doctrine, you have to stand up--even when you have to pay the price.

And if you turn the other cheek in Vietnam and you look the other way--because the price is heavy, and unpleasant, and ugly--what do you do when the Indian nation calls upon you for assistance and help? What do you do when the NATO nations call on you for assistance and help? What do you do when the hemispheric nations call on you for assistance and help? What do you do when little Israel calls on you for assistance and help?

I'll tell you what you do. You do what is right. You keep your commitment. You stand up for freedom, whatever the price.

A great American came into my office the other day. He'd been out to the front with the troops, with the men that are dying (and there are a hundred die every week in Vietnam for you so that you can peacefully assemble out here tonight). But Georgie Jessel had been out entertaining the troops. And he came in, in his uniform, and he was reporting to me on what he had seen and heard. When he got ready to leave he turned around to me and said, "Cheer up, Mr. President. I hoped I could make you laugh. But I didn't today.

"But I just want to say this to you: if I can't make you laugh, I want to make you think. You may feel that you do not have the capacity or the fortune or the understanding or the great character that some of our other Presidents have had that have borne these burdens. And I doubt that we will ever have many Lincolns produced in this country. But you and Lincoln had one thing in common. You both had many problems, you both had dissents, you both had divisions, and you both had disturbances and frustrations among your people. Remember that almost half of the people of the country were against Lincoln when he was so right in the war that was right. So be patient, be tolerant, be understanding."

I said, "Georgie, my job is never a question of doing what is right. Any President's greatest ambition is to do what is right when he holds that high office. My problem is knowing what is right." And I try my best to know what is right and I get more free and unsolicited advice than anybody in this country.

I try to consider all that I can read, and then I try to do what I think is right. And I believe that we are doing that. I know that no other age, before this one in which we live, has ever been so bright with promise or has ever held out so much hope for happiness, for health, for peace, and for prosperity as the one in which we live tonight. And we ought to be thankful.

So, give us your prayers; try to give us your understanding; give us your thoughts.

A great President of this country said, "The judgments of the many are much to be preferred to a decision of the few." And that is why I have come to three great areas in New York today, Buffalo, Syracuse, and here with you tonight.

That is why I am going to five States this weekend. My name is not on the ballot. I have already been elected. (Some of you may wish you could retract what you have done, but I'm there until January 1969.) But I came to talk to you and tell you my thoughts and to pick up some of yours. Those of you that don't have a chance to give them to me tonight, give them to me by letter. I read a hundred letters every week from the men who are out in the rice paddies who have time to write. And nearly every one of them realizes this could be the last letter that he ever writes.

But I believe that history, when it is written of our generation, remembering these crowning years of the 20th century, I believe that history will say: They did their job; they met their responsibilities; they recognized their duties and their obligations; they kept faith with their fathers; and by their work they earned for themselves and for their children a healthier, a happier, a more peaceful, and a more secure United States of America.

Anything that you can do to help me help bring that about will be very much appreciated. And if you don't get to see me personally, I will get Inc Resnick to come home early every weekend and you tell him to bring me the message.

Thank you.