Was Senator Mitch McConnell’s care and rehabilitation when he had polio as a child funded by the U.S. government? Partisan web sites have misrepresented the source of funding for the Republican senator’s care as an infant in Alabama. Where did the misinformation originate?
The Occupy Democrats Facebook page posted a meme on June 22, 2017, claiming that the government paid for McConnell’s care and rehabilitation when he contracted polio as an infant in the 1940s. This claim is contrasted with McConnell’s support for the Senate Republican health care plan.
As a kid, Mitch McConnell had polio, and the government paid for ALL of his care and rehabilitation. Now, as the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, McConnell is taking government-funded care away from tens of millions of Americans. Let that sink in.
To further support this claim, an article accompanied the meme reporting that government-sponsored, publicly funded healthcare saved the young McConnell’s life.
Mitch McConnell has been relentlessly working to roll back Medicaid and deprive millions of Americans of government-sponsored healthcare coverage for eight years now.
But if it weren’t for the government, McConnell wouldn’t be able to walk at all.
Young Mitch came down with a terrible case of polio as a child in Alabama. “My mother was, of course, like many mothers of young polio victims, perplexed about what to do, anxious about whether I would be disabled for the rest of my life” he admitted in a 2005 interview.
But luckily for him, his mother took him 50 miles to the Warm Springs, where President Roosevelt won his own battle with polio and established a polio treatment center that was paid for by the public.
President Roosevelt asked the people of America to send in dimes to the White House as part of his “March of the Dimes” foundation. Over two and a half million dimes were mailed in, and they paid for Mitch’s physical therapy and treatment.
A Death and Taxes article posted on the same date also reported a similar story.
How did Warm springs fund McConnell’s therapy, you ask? This was two decades before Lyndon Johnson launched federal health coverage by signing into law the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. In the mid-30s, Roosevelt and his law partner Basil O’Connor founded the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation and started organizing fundraising balls around the country.
By 1938, however, the balls grew less effective and the president needed a new strategy. Using a phrase coined by vaudeville entertainer Eddie Cantor, “March of Dimes” — a spin on the popular newsreel series “March of Time” — Roosevelt founded the March of Dimes foundation and launched a campaign asking the public to mail ten-cent donations to the White House. Within a month, Roosevelt received around 2,680,000 dimes. The campaign continued through WWII.
McConnell started visiting Warm Springs in 1944. In other words, he overcame polio with the help of public money allocated by the White House.
Here are some examples of people talking about the meme on social media.
Mitch McConnell had all of his polio treatment paid for as a child. Under your plan he would have capped out long ago.
— Erin Essenmacher (@eessenmacher) June 24, 2017
Mitch McConnell had Polio as a child, he wants to take Healthcare from crippled children. Trump refused Healthcare to his nephew. Mean men.
— pjhnsn8 (@pjhnsn8) June 24, 2017
Mitch McConnell is laughing because he got his free health care as a child with polio, so he doesn"t have to live in a wheelchair. https://t.co/m0v16aCoIH
— Nasty Woman (@HandToForehead) June 23, 2017
Mitch McConnell overcame polio with public money & government assistance. Now he wants to rip those ideals away from following generations.
— Ryan Przeslawski (@RAPrzes) June 23, 2017
McConnell has often told the story of his childhood affliction with polio, and the role of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Warm Springs rehabilitation center in his recovery. In his 2016 memoir The Long Game, McConnell recounted how he was struck with polio at the age of two while staying with his mother in his aunt’s home in Five Points, Ala.
It’s one of my life’s great fortunes that Sister’s home was only about sixty miles from Warm Springs, Georgia, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt had established a polio treatment center and where he’d often travel to find relief from the polio that paralyzed him at the age of thirty-nine.
My mother took me there every chance she had. The nurses would teach her how to perform exercises meant to rehabilitate my leg while also emphasizing her need to make me believe I could walk, even though I wasn’t allowed to.
It is apparent that McConnell received physical therapy and physical therapy training for his mother from the polio rehabilitation center established by Roosevelt at Warm Springs, Ga. However, neither this particular center nor the care given to McConnell were government-funded, according to Snopes.
Roosevelt purchased the Warm Springs property and established a center there in 1927. He and others set up the Warm Springs Foundation, a nonprofit organization that relied on donations.
The Warm Springs center that aided McConnell’s recovery was founded by Roosevelt, who was president at the time McConnell was struck with polio. However, it was operated as a nationwide nonprofit organization, not a federal or state agency, and it was not taxpayer or government-funded.
The Warm Springs center visited by McConnell remained owned and operated by a nonprofit organization until 1974, when the state of Georgia took it over, making it truly government-run. Since 2014, it has been owned and operated by Augusta University.
What did you think of the misinformation about McConnel’s polio care being funded by the government? Did you believe it or see people sharing it falsely on social media? Let us know in the comments section.
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