Word: sam
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When word reached Capitol Hill that the President was readying a special message urging Congress to hold down on spending, Democrats fired away. Republicans were "grabbing everywhere for an issue," growled House Speaker Sam Rayburn. It is "saddening," said Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, "that there are those who feel that they must take to the air waves because Congress is trying to work out some programs that will help people that need help. That is a peculiar motivation for panic." Congress, he rumbled, was not going to rubber-stamp "a program laid down by another branch of government...
...venerable 78, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn is acutely sensitive to the afflictions of age. This year his brother Tom, 72, underwent surgery for cancer, lingered for several months, then died. Farmer Tom Rayburn had no money, no health insurance. Mister Sam picked up the bill which ran into many thousands. "I had the money and was glad to do it," says Rayburn. "But a lot of folks don't have the money and can't do it." Rayburn, who rarely recounts personal stories unless they make a political point, was circulating that one last week-along...
...prosperous U.S. of 1960, the nation, like Mister Sam, has become increasingly aware of a general and growing problem: the number of old people in the U.S. is increasing, and fewer and fewer of them can afford the medical care they must have. Medical progress itself is largely responsible for swelling the number of U.S. oldsters over 65 from 3.1 million in 1900 to 15.5 million in 1960, and on to an estimated 24.5 million in 1980. A man or woman of 65 now can expect to live more than a dozen years; one in four will live a score...
...spends $140 a year for medical care, or $700 if hospitalization is needed. But 57% of the aged have means of less than $1.000 a year, counting social security benefits (see diagram), and most of them have banked less than $200 to meet a medical emergency. Says Dr. Sam Gertman, director of the University of Miami's geriatrics division: "An aged person usually can pay for his first illness out of his savings. On the second illness, he mortgages his home. After the third, he goes on the county...
...Soapy Sam Was a Cad. Most educated Englishmen were scientific illiterates, but Huxley greatly helped change that situation. He had speculated about evolution some years before Origin of Species was published, and in the five years after it exploded on the world (in 1859), Huxley exploded with it by issuing 46 major publications on subjects ranging from the fishes of the Devonian epoch to the New Labyrinthodonts from the Edinburgh coalfield. With a "basilisk artistry" on the lecture platform and "a certain ruthlessness," Huxley loved to bandy texts and split hairs with the theologians. He signed letters in mock church...