Operation Coffee Cup

Operation Coffee Cup was a campaign conducted by the American Medical Association (AMA) Women's Auxiliary in early 1961[1] in opposition to the Democrats' plans to extend Social Security to include health insurance for the elderly, later known as Medicare.

As part of the plan, doctors' wives organized coffee meetings to try to convince acquaintances to write letters to Congress opposing the program.

Dr. Morris Fishbein, the AMA's president, described the organization's attitude as early as 1939: ... all forms of security, compulsory security, even against old age and unemployment, represent a beginning invasion by the state into the personal life of the individual, represent a taking away of individual responsibility, a weakening of national caliber, a definite step toward either communism or totalitarianism.

To that end he sent a health care bill to Congress, HR 4222, known as the King-Anderson legislation after its sponsors (Senator Clinton Anderson, of New Mexico, and Rep. Cecil King, of California).

[4][5] The bill provisioned a significant expansion of the government's role in caring for the elderly, including features of what would eventually become Medicare.