March 29, 1962
Dear Mike:
Just a word to congratulate you on your appearance on the cover of Modern Medicine for March 19, 1962. It was interesting even for one in Houston, to read of the extent of your activities, the length of your day and your prodigious capacity for work; which has done so much for the advancement of surgery at Baylor and the Medical Center.
However, I was indeed disturbed to learn, I suppose somewhat belatedly, that you headed the Democratic Party's Committee on Health Policy which indorsed Kennedy's plan for care of the aged, under Social Security. Doctors have always taken care of those in need, or favored means of taking care of them. This proposal of placing medical care of the aged, whether over or under 65 or any other age under Social Security, is of course, nothing but Socialized Medicine; and would indeed be a disaster for the quality of medical care, which the United States has become used to, There is only thing that would be more disastrous for the citizens of this Country than the passage of the King-Anderson bill, and that would be the atomic bomb itself. Nothing else would change it and degrade it more. I feel this so strongly that, with my partners, I have had printed the inclosed letter and have sent it out to thousands of our patients and friends.
Yours truly,
Thomas D. Cronin, M. D.
Incl -- printed letter