As public interest in national health insurance programs became widespread, the AMA launched a counterattack. In response to the increasing evidence that a high percentage of Americans received little or no medical care, the AMA conducted its own survey and declared that the only citizens receiving inferior care were those under the jurisdiction of governmental agencies. The AMA rallied political support by accusing national health plans of destroying the medical profession, reducing doctors to mere laborers. ". . . Medicine . . . is practiced as an art and as a science, without any reference to hours of work or any fixed formula for its administration. These are the characteristics of the profession and the question which we must answer for ourselves and for the people is simply the question as to whether medicine shall remain a profession or become a trade," challenged Fishbein.

A Counterattack against National Health Insurance.