LBJ Launches Medicare: 'You Can't Treat Grandma This Way'

[Uncle Joe]

Last edited Wed Jul 28, 2021, 09:13 PM - Edit history (1)

BY BILL MOYERS | JULY 30, 2017


An elderly woman shows her gratitude to President Lyndon B. Johnson for his signing of the Medicare health care bill in July 1965. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Watching the craziness in the Senate this week, as Mitch McConnell and the GOP’s zealots drove their clown car into a brick wall and yet another effort to take away health care coverage from millions crashed and burned, I thought back to a different turn of events.

It was 52 years ago this Sunday — July 30, 1965. Two American presidents celebrated the birth of Medicare, the most significant advance toward national health insurance in America’s history.

I was a White House assistant at the time, working for President Lyndon B. Johnson as he coaxed, cajoled, badgered, buttonholed and maneuvered Congress into enacting Medicare for the aging and Medicaid to help low-income people. For all the public displays over the years of his outsized personae and powers of persuasion, this time he had kept a low profile, working behind the scenes as his legislative team and career health care experts practically lived on Capitol Hill, negotiating with members of Congress and their staffs.

From the White House, LBJ worked the phones; invited senators and representatives singly and collectively in for coffee, drinks or dinner; listened attentively in private to opponents and proponents from interests as varied as business, labor, medicine and religion; and kept in his head a running tally of the fluctuating vote count.

(snip)


President Lyndon Johnson flips through the pages of the Medicare bill for former President Harry Truman in Independence, Missouri on July 30, 1965. Behind Johnson and Truman are Mrs. Johnson (left), Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Mrs. Truman. (Photo by Bettmann Collection via Getty Images)

(snip)

https://billmoyers.com/story/lbj-launches-medicare-cant-treat-grandma-way/?fbclid=IwAR2voT1HqS2tDyBDfKugLUXSDbZii6so2w4fAIZnNR1pQJtw7S1d8RFa070

P.S. See date at top of article. ^

[MiniMe]

1. ?? Today is the 28th.

Shouldn't it be 52 years from this Saturday?

[wnylib]

2. From 1965 to 2021 is not 52 years, either.

This is clearly an old article.

I remember the arguments about Medicare. Opponents were very upset about the "commie" socialized medicine.

But they signed up as soon as they were eligible.

[brush]

3. So had Truman advocated for it too? Is that why this photo op...

took place?

Funny how it's always Democratic presidents that get significant social safety net additions done.

Biden is about to get infrastructure done, btw. Obama got the Affordable Care act done.

I don't need to mention FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society.

The nation would still have child laborers if it was left up to republicans.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Yes, here is some more

(snip)

At about this time in Washington, Republicans, conservative Democrats and the American Medical Association (AMA) were winning their fight to sink President Roosevelt’s proposal for health insurance. Congress was intimidated, and in August 1935 FDR gave up, signing the Social Security Act without health coverage.

Eight years later, in the midst of World War II, he once again called for social insurance “that will extend from the cradle to the grave.” And again, his proposal went nowhere.

On FDR’s death, Harry Truman became president. In his 1948 Message to Congress on the State of the Union, he said:

This great nation cannot afford to allow its citizens to suffer needlessly from the lack of proper medical care. Our ultimate aim must be a comprehensive insurance system to protect all our people equally against insecurity and ill health.

(snip)


https://billmoyers.com/story/lbj-launches-medicare-cant-treat-grandma-way/?fbclid=IwAR2voT1HqS2tDyBDfKugLUXSDbZii6so2w4fAIZnNR1pQJtw7S1d8RFa070

[brush]

6. Thanks for this info.

[Uncle Joe]

9. You're welcome but this was the kicker which made that photo especially poignant

Last edited Thu Jul 29, 2021, 02:22 AM - Edit history (1)

(snip)

Congress still refused to budge. Running for election in his own right that year, and way behind in the polls, Truman won an upset victory after demanding that health care insurance and civil rights be included in the Democratic Party platform. That same year, congressman Lyndon Johnson of Texas, whose home district was Democratic and liberal in a state turning increasingly Republican and conservative, was running for election to the US Senate. He opposed Truman’s health care plan as socialistic and was elected.

In 1952, Republicans won control of Congress for the first time since 1932 and hardened their stand against a national health care program. War hero Dwight Eisenhower won the presidency for the Republicans. He, too, opposed the plan that had been shelved by Congress before Truman left office.

(snip)

Back the bill went to a conference committee between the House and Senate. Then to the House floor again, where it survived more than 500 amendments before passing on July 27 by majority vote, 307-116. One day later the Senate passed it, 70-24. All that was needed now was the president’s signature and Medicare and Medicaid would become the nation’s first public health insurance programs.

And that’s how it came to pass that 52 years ago, on the morning of July 30, 1965. President Johnson loaded up two planeloads of dignitaries and headed toward Independence, Missouri, hometown of former President Harry Truman. He intended to sign the bill at the side of the man whose original proposal LBJ had dismissed as socialism. Now he revered Truman as “the real daddy of Medicare.” Here’s the actual moment Medicare became the law of the land:

(snip)

https://billmoyers.com/story/lbj-launches-medicare-cant-treat-grandma-way/?fbclid=IwAR2voT1HqS2tDyBDfKugLUXSDbZii6so2w4fAIZnNR1pQJtw7S1d8RFa070

[brush]

10. Hah! So LBJ was against it before he was for it.

That sounds familiar...in a reverse Kerry sort of way.

I must say I do prefer pols who can evolve.

DU is a virtual cornucopia of useful information. You must be a historian.

[empedocles]

7. I remember a line attributed to LBJ - ''they're putting grandma out on the curb''.

[rickyhall]

4. No, actually it's 56 years ago, Saturday.

[appalachiablue]

8. Good to see this, tx UJ. LBJ's efforts

with legislation and programs under the Great Society were massive...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society