A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law on this day in 1965, culminating a decades long campaign to provide health insurance for America’s senior citizen. Former President Harry Truman, then 81, sat at the signing table with Johnson. Although Truman’s efforts to establish national health care were defeated, Democrats didn’t give up. Truman was issued the first Medicare card.
Sen. Mike Mansfield is behind Johnson, Sen. Hubert Humphrey is behind Truman. Ladybird Johnson is dressed in blue, Bess Truman in yellow. I think Rep. Wilbur Mills is on the right.
Although Medicare remains stingy, covering around 80 percent of medical expenses, it also remains a single-payer system, as envisioned in the 1960 platform of the Democratic Party:
Health
Illness is expensive. Many Americans have neither incomes nor insurance protection to enable them to pay for modern health care. The problem is particularly acute with our older citizens, among whom serious illness strikes most often.
We shall provide medical care benefits for the aged as part of the time-tested Social Security insurance system. We reject any proposal which would require such citizens to submit to the indignity of a means test—a “pauper’s oath.”
For young and old alike, we need more medical schools, more hospitals, more research laboratories to speed the final conquest of major killers.
Medical Care for Older Persons
Fifty million Americans—more than a fourth of our people—have no insurance protection against the high cost of illness. For the rest, private health insurance pays, on the average, only about one-third of the cost of medical care.
The problem is particularly acute among the 16 million Americans over 65 years old, and among disabled workers, widows and orphans.
Most of these have low incomes and the elderly among them suffer two to three times as much illness as the rest of the population.
The Republican Administration refused to acknowledge any national responsibility for health care for elder citizens until forced to do so by an increasingly outraged demand. Then, its belated proposal was a cynical sham built around a degrading test based on means or income—a “pauper’s oath.”
The most practicable way to provide health protection for older people is to use the contributory machinery of the Social Security system for insurance covering hospital bills and other high-cost medical services. For those relatively few of our older people who have never been eligible for Social Security coverage, we shall provide corresponding benefits by appropriations from the general revenue.
Today’s Wall Street Democrats — I’m looking at you, Hillary — never would permit so progressive a plank in their national platform. Bernie Sanders would.
When Medicare finally became law, the U.S. was far behind other advanced nations in its approach to social insurance. Speaking on 13 June 1963 to the National Council of Senior Citizens, President John Kennedy said:
There isn’t a country in Western Europe that didn’t do what we are doing 50 years ago or 40 years ago, not a single country that is not way ahead of this rich, productive, progressive country of ours. We are not suggesting something radical and new or violent. We are not suggesting that the government come between the doctor and his patient. We are suggesting what every other major, developed, intelligent country did for its people a generation ago. I think it is time the United States caught up.
There’s more of Kennedy’s remarks, and more on Medicare, at The New Republic.
Montana’s Democratic Party issued this statement:
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. In Montana, Democrats are celebrating the promise that these programs have made to our seniors and working families.
“For half a century Medicare and Medicaid have provided Montana’s seniors and working families with affordable health care coverage,” said Nancy Keenan, Executive Director of the Montana Democratic Party. “As we celebrate this historic achievement, Democrats also commend Governor Bullock for working tirelessly with the state Legislature to pass the HELP Act and expand Medicaid to provide 70,000 more Montanans access to affordable health care.”
Medicaid expansion will help up to 70,000 Montanans get the health care they need and deserve. This includes 9,500 veterans and their family members and 20,000 American Indians. Additionally, Medicaid expansion will boost Montana’s economy. Expansion will support 11,500 to 12,700 new jobs and statewide earnings could increase by $3.5 billion by 2021.
Despite the success of these programs, some Montana Republicans would end Medicare and Medicaid as we know it. Democrats remain committed to protecting the promise that these programs have made to Montana’s seniors and working families.
Montana AFL-CIO Executive Secretary Al Ekblad also issued a statement:
Retired Montanans are struggling to get by, but they know how much worse things would be without Medicare. For fifty years, Medicare has given seniors the ability to see a doctor and fill a prescription. Medicare is the most successful health care program in America’s history. That’s why we must strengthen Medicare and fight back when out-of-touch politicians push for privatization.
The prescription benefit was added in George W. Bush’s first term, and requires purchasing a private prescription medication insurance policy. The Affordable Care Act did not change that system to federal single-payer.
Medicare was just the start. Now we must convert it to American Care, an everyone covered for everything, zero dollar, federal single-payer system financed by progressive taxation. We can afford it. And at some point, we will muster the resolve to do it.