Edward R. Annis

Edward R. Annis (27 March 1913 to 14 September 2009) was an American surgeon born in Detroit, Michigan. He took his medical degree at Marquette University School of Medicine in 1938, completed a surgical residency at Cook County Graduate School of Surgery and settled in Florida, first practicing in Tallahassee and from 1953 serving as chief of surgery at Mercy Hospital in Miami. He is best known for organized medicine's side of the early 1960s Medicare debate. As a speaker for the American Medical Association from December 1959, he toured the country arguing against the King-Anderson bill, which would have paid for hospital care for retirees through Social Security taxes, and he took part in televised debates on it. The bill died in committee in 1962 and 1963. He served as president of the AMA from June 1963 to June 1964 and later as president of the World Medical Association, and he set out his views in the book Code Blue: Health Care in Crisis. This entry records what he held and argued, and it is not medical advice.