Pres. Nixon's State of the Union speeches: on Health Care

No American will miss basic medical care by inability to pay

• A program to insure that no American family will be prevented from obtaining basic medical care by inability to pay.
• I will propose a major increase in and redirection of aid to medical schools, to greatly increase the number of doctors and other health personnel.
• Incentives to improve the delivery of health services, to get more medical care resources into those areas that have not been adequately served, to make greater use of medical assistants, and to slow the alarming rise in the costs of medical care.
• New programs to encourage better preventive medicine, by attacking the causes of disease & injury, and by providing incentives to doctors to keep people well rather than just to treat them when they are sick.
• I will also ask for an appropriation of $100 million to launch an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer.

Wrong to put health care system under heavy federal hand

Now, I recognize that other plans have been put forward that would put our whole health care system under the heavy hand of the Federal Government. This is the wrong approach. This has been tried abroad, and it has failed. It is not the way we do things here in America. This kind of plan would threaten the quality of care provided by our whole health care system. The right way is one that builds on the strengths of the present system. Government has a great role to play, but we must always make sure that our doctors will be working for their patients and not for the Federal Government.