Governor Ronald Reagan’s Autograph Manuscript For a Famous Televised Speech on Healthcare and Taxes

“You the working men and women of California have provided these cards with no control over how they are used. The card holder never pays a nickel – you get the bill, and you don’t know how much it will be until it’s presented to you for payment. This is truly medical carte blanche.You are actually being taxed to provide better medical care for the card holders than you can afford for yourself or your family.”

This draft shines a spotlight on Reagan’s thinking, and his speech-writing methodology

On January 3, 1967, Ronald Reagan, who had campaigned on a promise to rein in state spending and cut back on government programs, was sworn in as Governor of California. He inherited a $200 million deficit in a state where the governor was required by constitution to submit a balanced budget. Reagan proposed a 10% across-the-board cut in state spending, recommended that tuition be imposed at the University of California for the first time in its history, and sought cuts in the state mental health system. He then took on welfare entitlements, specifically the Medi-Cal program, which was similar to Medicaid and partly state-funded, and which provided free health care to the state’s 2.5 million welfare recipients. Reagan wished to curtail it, proposing that the legislature limit Medi-Cal spending to no more than what an average citizen who paid for his own health needs laid out during a year.

The Democrats opposed his attack on MediCal, and they were led by State House Speaker Jesse Unruh. In April and May 1967, Reagan’s proposal to reduce state funding for the program was taken up, and defeated. Reagan responded by attempting to implement Medi-Cal cuts by executive order, which he justified by alleging that the state lacked funds to pay for all that was provided for by law. He reacted with anger when a Sacramento Superior Court judge denied his view of the governor’s constitutional powers, and blocked implementation of his Medi-Cal cuts.

When the State Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, Reagan demanded that the legislature amend the law in special session to ratify his curtailments. Further, echoing his deeply-felt, conservative feelings about judges, he told the court to “Get out of our store”, because it had “substituted its policy views for those of our own medical experts.” If Reagan thought that the Democrat-dominated legislature would take the side of a conservative executive department against a liberal Supreme Court on a liberal issue, Unruh quickly disabused him of this belief. In a series of legislative maneuvers that attempted to make an end run around Reagan, Unruh instead pushed several measures to remedy Medi-Cal’s alleged fund shortage.

Reagan beheld these legislative actions with dismay and resentment, believing they did nothing to solve the problem. Most of these measures were soon shelved, as Unruh took the position that changing the MediCal program was unnecessary because Medi-Cal was not running out of money as the administration asserted. In late November 1967, the Speaker stated that estimates of Medi-Cal’s shortages had been reduced, and he backed a resolution to put a moratorium on Medi-Cal legislation and administrative action until a legislative committee had audited the program and determined the state of its finances.

On December 4, Reagan counterattacked via television, his most comfortable medium, to defend his conservative take on the program, with a one-and-one-half-minute statement stressing that Medi-Cal was an enormously costly program, and telling taxpayers that it amounted to “medical carte blanche” which provided “better medical care for these cardholders than you can afford for yourself or your family.”

These are his original notes for the statewide television broadcast, which was taped a week before so he could leave for a round of Republican fund-raising speeches. It contains substantially the text he actually delivered. In it, Reagan aimed his words pointedly at the millions of middle class Californians who paid for Medi-Cal. He called it a system in which the recipients get free credit cards for medical carte blanche, and that it provided better medical care for poor people than the taxpayers who finance it can furnish to their own families. He added that these cards are provided with no control over how they are used, and that working men and women paid for them. Looking the viewer straight in the eye, Reagan said with emphasis that he needed passage of legislation that will allow him discretion to make the cuts in Medi- Cal services he planned before the State Supreme Court ruled them illegal.

Autograph speech, Sacramento, circa November 30, 1967, and delivered December 4. “California has reached a crossroads in its Medi-Cal program. Those who argue whether or how much is the deficit are ignoring this simple fact: even with no deficit Medi-Cal is increasing by 50% a year. It went up $100 million this year and will cost $1 billion in the next 2 years. Unless the legislature overhauls medical we will need a tax increase every year just to pay for this program. Now I don’t believe any Californian should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. We have reduced non-essential medical services so that we can continue to give life-saving medical care to those on welfare and another 160,000 who need help in time of illness. The state supreme court has ruled instead that we must throw these 160,000 back on the counties and the property tax payers instead of eliminating non-essential services.

“We have asked the legislature to tell the court they intended us to have the flexibility to run the program sensibly and efficiently. Apparently some legislators would rather ask the people for more taxes each year than apply common sense to this problem. For example, this is a medical-cal credit card [he must have held up the card for the audience to see] given to 1,200,000 Californians. It gives free medical care for any ailment, real or imagined. The holder can go to as many doctors as he wishes as many times as he wishes.

“You the working men and women of California have provided these cards with no control over how they are used. The card holder never pays a nickel – you get the bill, and you don’t know how much it will be until it’s presented to you for payment. This is truly medical carte blanche. You are actually being taxed to provide better medical care for the card holders than you can afford for yourself or your family.” This is a well-known speech, and has been quoted in numerous books and newspapers.

This draft shines a spotlight on Reagan’s thinking, and his speech-writing methodology, as he made numerous changes to his text as he went along, to eliminate negative-sounding language for more neutral terminology. Early in the manuscript, “Those who would confuse us with arguments” became the less confrontational but equally effective “Those who argue”. The preachy “Let me remind you that last year we had to appropriate” was deleted from the speech. He altered the victims of the program from “self-supporting people” became “taxpayers”. The negative term “admit to the faults in this program” became the easier to swallow “ask the people for more taxes each year than apply common sense to this problem”. And similarly, “some of the faults are obvious” was replaced with “It gives free medical care for any ailment, real or imagined. The holder can go to as many doctors as he wishes as many times as he wishes.”

This is the first Reagan speech manuscript in his hand that we have ever had, and a search of public sale records going back 30 years shows only three others, the last coming up in 2002.  It is one of only two known to have reached the market that were given via television.