Remarks to the Press on Making Public the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Health Manpower

Ladies and gentlemen:

We have met with Mr. Miller, his Staff Director, and others associated with the Commission, and reviewed this report that is being made public today in some detail, with the entire membership of the Cabinet.

I thought that was required. I believe the report should be required reading by all of the Cabinet members. I hope they can study it and bring me their recommendations at a very early date.

We are very concerned with the health of our people in this country--and their health security. We have pending before the Congress-and have had most of this year--one of the most comprehensive and one of the most far-reaching social security measures that has ever been proposed in this country. It raises the monthly benefit to individuals to $70 a month. That is the minimum.

It provides for an across-the-board increase of 15 percent to the social security beneficiaries. It has vital, important changes which would result in a total increase of payments averaging 20 percent.

It contains extremely important provisions for providing incentives--and this is very important--incentives for better service and more efficient service in the health care industry.

I do not need to remind you of my intense interest in health services, in health care, and in health programs in this country. We have passed some 24 major health bills in the last 4 years--perhaps more than passed in all other administrations put together.

I have asked Mr. Miller and the Staff Director, Dr. Peter Bing, to come here today and have Dr. Bing and Mr. Miller brief you.

Now a word to the members of the Commission themselves: I know how many long hours of work and study went into this report. I repeat the expression of gratitude that I made at the Cabinet meeting the other day to you, Mr. Miller, and all the members of your Commission.

I think that your report can move us much closer to our national goal, which is good health care for every citizen, high quality and efficient health care.

I think we all recognize that we spend millions each year for medical research in NIH and in the other great laboratories of the Nation. I think we all realize that America leads the way in medical research, but all that work and all of those dollars are worthless unless every American citizen can have some benefit from this medical research.

That is why I think this report is so important to every American. I observed in reviewing the report that you make one thing quite clear: that Government is not big enough to solve the problem of health care. I want to reemphasize that this morning.

I am glad you said it. I certainly agree with it. I want it to be a taking-off point so we can get other people besides the Government in on this job. The Government will do its full share. It is doing that starting right now insofar as I am concerned.

I am asking every department of this Government concerned with health care to carefully evaluate and study every one of these recommendations and make a report back to the President with a full comment on them.

But I want to ask the Commission members to do another job: I want to make sure that this report goes to somebody besides the Government agencies.

I hope that you will do what you can, and you will, before you leave here, evaluate and try to plan how we can get this report into the private sector, how we can get it to all the educators, how we can get it to all the molders of public opinion, how we can get it to all the hospital officials concerned with it, how we can get it to the insurance companies, how we can make it available to the doctors, how we can mail it out, how we can start discussions, how we can get it on everyone's tongue.

It is not something that is involved with a great tragedy. It is not anything sensational. Therefore, it is not going to make the big headlines that we have come to expect. But the information in this report is something that needs very much to be disseminated. I hope that you will give some thought to that.

I can only add that in all the commissions that we have appointed, and they are legion--Mr. Miller is Chairman and Mr. Beirne of the Communications Workers; Mrs. Bunting of Radcliffe College; Dr. James C. Cain of the Mayo Clinic; Dr. Dent of Dillard University; Dr. Ebert of Harvard Medical School; Mr. Freeman, vice chairman of the board of the First National Bank of Chicago; Mr. Kermit Gordon, president of the Brookings Institution--one of the best Budget Directors we have ever had; Dr. Russell Nelson of the Johns Hopkins Hospital; Mr. Quigg Newton, president of the Commonwealth Fund; Mr. Odegaard, president of the University of Washington in Seattle; Mr. Thomas Vail, publisher of the Cleveland Plain Dealer; Dr. Joseph F. Volker, vice president for health affairs at the University of Alabama; Dr. Dwight L. Wilbur, clinical professor of medicine at Stanford University and president-elect of the American Medical Association; and Dr. Alonzo S. Yerby, director of the Inter-Faculty Program on Health and Medical Care, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston--you have done what I believe is an unusual and outstanding job. You had little reward.

I don't know that this is much more, but I do want you to know that you have the gratitude and the appreciation of your President. I think in due time it will be very clear to you that you have rendered a great service to humanity and to the people of America. I thank you in advance.