Dr. Malcolm C. Todd; Advisor to 5 Presidents

Dr. Malcolm C. Todd, former president of the California and American Medical Assns. and medical advisor to five presidents who helped shape governmental decisions on medical care, has died in Long Beach. He was 87.

Todd, former chief of staff and trustee of Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, died Monday at that facility. He had recently donated the kickoff contribution for what will become the complex’s Malcolm C. Todd Cancer Institute, a regional center for cancer prevention, research, education, diagnosis and treatment.

A staunch believer in broad health insurance for everyone, Todd worked to expand private coverage and develop government programs to fill the gaps. The internationally respected medical official flew more than 10 million miles studying health delivery systems and advising more than 40 countries around the globe.

“No one,” he told The Times in 1975 when he was president of the AMA, “should be put into bankruptcy because of illness.”

Born in Carlyle, Ill., and educated at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University Medical School, Todd began working with government health programs as an Army surgical chief in Europe. At the war’s end, as a consultant to the Navy, he helped Adm. Jimmy James develop a medical aid plan for military dependents.

For more than two decades, Todd served as personal physician to President Richard M. Nixon. He traveled with Nixon in his 1950 congressional campaign and three national campaigns for the vice presidency and the presidency. Todd also advised Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan. Nixon appointed Todd to three consecutive terms as U.S. delegate to the World Health Organization and to the board of regents of the Uniformed Services University of Health Science in Maryland, and Ford named him to the Presidential Economic Commission.

Todd served as president of the Long Beach Medical Assn. and then was elected president of the California Medical Assn. for 1968-69 and of the AMA in 1974-75. He also served as president of the International College of Surgeons.

As chief spokesman for American doctors in the mid-1970s, Todd worked to staunch spiraling medical costs, particularly the escalating premiums paid by physicians for malpractice insurance. He told AMA members at their national convention in 1975 that the inability of new doctors to obtain insurance and the burgeoning cost that was putting many doctors out of business was “the most convulsive and electrifying” issue facing the organization.

But his speech to the group a year earlier had been titled “Making Us Part of the Answer,” and the doctor often described himself as “a moderate conservative but a realist.”

“A doctor,” he once told The Times, “must assume the responsibility that comes with the realization that every decision he makes for the patient carries a price tag.”

What Todd worked for his entire career--around the world and at home in Long Beach--was meshing government and private funding and facilities to provide good health care for all.

In Long Beach, Todd served as president of the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, chairman of the local chapter of the American Red Cross and head of the city’s Economic Development Council and Promotion Commission. He was also the organizing chairman of the Long Beach Community Services Development Council, which obtained a $1-million federal grant to establish anti-poverty services in the city.

Todd never hesitated to express his views on public health issues--for expanded legal abortion, against doctors advertising, for greater medical education opportunities for minorities, against lawyers’ contingency fees, for greater education about drugs, sex and smoking, and against government authorization for health care without providing the necessary funding.

Widowed in 1997 by the death of his wife of 52 years, the former Ruth Holle Schlake, Todd married Betty Eastman, who survives. Todd is also survived by his son, Douglas, of Alexandria, Va.; a brother, Dr. William Todd of Long Beach; a sister, Jean Dunning of Iowa; three stepsons, Timothy, Douglas and Brian Toews; one grandson and five step-grandchildren.

A memorial service is scheduled for Friday at 12:30 p.m. at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. The family has asked that any memorial contributions be made to the Malcolm C. Todd Cancer Institute at the facility, 2801 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, CA 90806, or to a charity of the donor’s choice.