July 30, 1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson Signed the Medicare & Medicaid Act 🥼

- Medicare and Medicaid Act (1965), Milestone Documents, National Archives 📰

On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare and Medicaid Act, also known as the Social Security Amendments of 1965, into law. It established Medicare, a health insurance program for the elderly, and Medicaid, a health insurance program for people with limited income.

In 1965, the passage of the Social Security Amendments, popularly known as Medicare and Medicaid, resulted in one basic program of health insurance for persons aged 65 and older, and another program providing health insurance for people with limited income funded by state and federal sources, respectively. It was funded by a tax on the earnings of employees, matched by contributions by employers, and was well received. In the first three years of the program, nearly 20 million beneficiaries enrolled in it.

Debate over the program actually began two decades earlier when President Harry S. Truman sent a message to Congress asking for legislation establishing a national health insurance plan. At that time, vocal opponents warned of the dangers of “socialized medicine.” By the end of Truman’s administration, he had backed off from a plan of universal coverage, but administrators in the Social Security system and others began to focus on the idea of a program aimed at insuring Social Security beneficiaries whose numbers and needs were growing.

The 1950 census showed that the aged population in the United States had grown from 3 million in 1900 to 12 million in 1950.

Two-thirds of older Americans had incomes of less than $1,000 annually, and only one in eight had health insurance. Between 1950 and 1963, the aged population grew from about 12 million to 17.5 million, or from 8.1 to 9.4 % of the U.S. population. At the same time, the cost of hospital care was rising at a rate of about 6.7 % a year, several times the annual increase in the cost of living, and health care costs were rapidly outpacing growth in the incomes of older Americans...
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/medicare-and-medicaid-act
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U.S. Senate. Medicare Signed into Law, July 30, 1965 🖋

On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson traveled to the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, to sign Medicare into law. His gesture drew attention to the 20 years it had taken Congress to enact government health insurance for senior citizens after Harry Truman had proposed it. In fact, Medicare’s history dated back even further.

Congress held its first hearings on government health insurance in 1916 during the Progressive Era.

During the New Deal, health coverage became part of the deliberations over the Social Security program, but President Franklin Roosevelt decided it was better strategy to pass the old-age pension provisions first. In 1939 Senator Robert Wagner introduced national health legislation and held hearings, but the outbreak of World War II caused his bill to be shelved. It was not until after the war, in November 1945, that Harry Truman sent Congress the first comprehensive federal health insurance proposal. That bill went nowhere.

During Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency Congress enacted the Kerr-Mills bill for cases of “medical indigency,” to cover elderly individuals who needed help with their medical bills but who failed to qualify for welfare in their states. But reformers regarded Kerr-Mills as inadequate, given the rising number of elderly and the rising cost of hospital care. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy made Medicare a legislative priority and recruited Clinton Anderson of New Mexico to manage his bill.

Anderson, a pragmatic and effective legislator, had suffered frequent bouts of illness throughout his life.

“Perhaps a man who has spent much of his life fighting off the effects of illness,” he once wrote, “acquires…an understanding of the importance of professional health care to all people.” Though public opinion polls suggested strong support for the bill, Anderson faced powerful opponents, including the House Ways and Means chairman, the American Medical Assoc., and Senate Finance Committee chairman Harry Byrd of Va. The bill’s opponents prevailed, narrowly defeating the bill in 1962. It was reintroduced in 1963, and following Kennedy’s assassination, Anderson worked painstakingly to build solid, bipartisan Senate support...https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Medicare_Signed_Into_Law.htm

- LBJ signs the Medicare Bill, July 30, 1965.
President Johnson signing the Medicare Bill at the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri and presenting President Truman with the first Medicare Card.