America's Senior Citizens Were "Spared the Darkness of Sickness Without Hope": 50th Anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid
President Lyndon Johnson, President Harry S. Truman, and others walk through the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum during the Medicare Bill signing event. LBJ Library photo by Yoichi Okamoto, July 30, 1965
At the top of President Lyndon Johnson’s legislative agenda in 1965 was Medicare, a federally funded insurance program to provide low-cost medical and hospital care for America’s elderly under Social Security. Half of the country’s population over age sixty-five had no medical insurance, and a third of the aged lived in poverty, unable to afford proper medical care; Johnson believed it was high time to do something about this.
Shortly after his November election win, he told Health, Education, and Welfare's assistant secretary, Wilbur Cohen, to make Medicare the administration’s "number one priority." On January 4, Johnson put the issue front and center in his State of the Union message (full text); three days later he pressed for passage of Medicare, issuing a statement to Congress demanding that America’s senior citizens "be spared the darkness of sickness without hope."
Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to seriously consider a federal health insurance program. As Congress churned out New Deal legislation, Roosevelt advocated inclusion of a federal health insurance component in his Social Security Act of 1935, before dropping it to avoid jeopardizing the bill's passage. Fourteen years later, Harry Truman sent the House a bill that would offer health insurance to those age sixty-five and older, but it was blocked by an intractable Ways and Means Committee. Kennedy tried, too, sending a comparable bill to Capitol Hill in 1962, where it missed passage in the Senate by a few votes.
In each case, the American Medical Association (AMA) was the chief culprit in killing the legislation, spending millions to brand the concept as "socialized medicine," an ambiguous characterization that nonetheless made it intrinsically un-American. Conservatives also cast a wary eye. Actor Ronald Reagan, a darling of the growing conservative movement and soon-to-be California gubernatorial candidate, warned that such a program would "invade every area of freedom in this country" and would, in years to come, have Americans waxing wistful to future generations about "what it was like in America when men were free."
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President Johnson's top domestic advisor, Joseph A. Califano, Jr., reveals how the president convinced the head of the American Medical Association to support Medicare. Anecdote told during a Friends of the LBJ Library event on Thursday, March 26, 2015 at the LBJ Presidential Library.
Historic Voting Rights Act Turns 50 on August 6, 2015
Jul 29, 2015
The LBJ Presidential Library and the Travis County Tax Office will partner to host a voter registration drive on Thursday, August 6 – 50 years to the day after President Lyndon Johnson signed the historic Voting Rights Act, one of the most impactful laws in this country.
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