1965 – The Medicare and Medicaid Act Timelines: National Health Law Program Timeline Show
July 30, 1965  1965 – The Medicare and Medicaid Act Timelines: National Health Law Program Timeline On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Social Security Act Amendments, popularly known as the Medicare bill. It established Medicare, a health insurance program for the elderly, and Medicaid, a health insurance program for the poor. “Larry Silver must have given me the assignment of understanding Medicaid. I remember taking the huge volumes of congressional records on a nice spring day and sitting under a tree and laboriously sorting through them to understand congressional intent. For a period of time I was the only person in the country that really understood the Medicaid and the numbers. This became my area of expertise, and I was able to really raise the awareness of Medicaid in local legal services.” -Pat Butler, Former National Health Law Program Staff Attorney, Specializing in Medicaid, 2018 Related ContentOn 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 Association, and Senate Finance Committee chairman Harry Byrd of Virginia. 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. Under intense pressure Anderson’s own health faltered, forcing him to manage portions of the bill from a hospital bed at Walter Reed. In 1964 the House and Senate passed alternative versions of the bill but failed to resolve those differences in conference. Lyndon Johnson’s long coattails in the 1964 presidential contest increased support for Medicare in both chambers of Congress. Anderson seized the moment, working closely with House members to expand the scope of the original bill. On July 27 and 28, 1965, the House and the Senate agreed to the conference report on the final bill, which offered a “three layer cake” of coverage: hospital insurance for the aged, physicians’ insurance for the elderly, and expanded federal assistance to supplement state medical payments for the poor. In recognition of Anderson’s efforts, President Johnson invited him to attend the Medicare signing ceremony in Independence, Missouri, with former president Harry Truman. It was 50 years ago Thursday, on July 30, 1965, that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare bill, turning the national social security healthcare program for older Americans into law. But, despite Johnson’s legendary powers of legislative persuasion, the celebratory signing event—complete with the enrollment of the first Medicare beneficiary, former President Harry S. Truman—could have looked very different. After all, the idea of helping American seniors afford health care took time to gain traction: The idea came up not long after Franklin Roosevelt initiated the modern social-security system in the 1930s. When the coinage “Medicare” first came on the American scene, the program it described was not the one we think of today. In 1960, the term referred to an opposing program proposed by the Eisenhower administration. The big fear at the time was that tying any kind of health aid to social security would quickly deplete the funds available for that then-30-year-old system; Eisenhower’s version, overseen by then-Vice President Richard Nixon, would have been both voluntary and state-funded. In that year’s Presidential campaign, however, Nixon lost to challenger John F. Kennedy—who, as TIME put it a few years later, “vowed without qualification that his Administration would persuade a Democratic Congress to pass a medicare bill, to be financed under the social security system.” Kennedy died, however, before he could make good on that promise—which is where Johnson comes in. Benefiting from his 1964 election victory, Johnson made it happen. But what exactly it would look like remained to be settled. By April of 1965, as TIME reported, there were three options in the running: Johnson’s social-security-linked compulsory program; an Eisenhower-esque voluntary program with no link to social security; or an American Medical Association-backed plan called “eldercare,” which prioritized patient choice and was need-based. The solution came, surprisingly, in the form of House Ways and Mean Committee chair Wilbur Mills, who had been a staunch opponent of Medicare. He combined elements of the three plans into one that would succeed. The basics of the plan were compulsory and funded by increasing social-security taxes, while extras were voluntary. The program we now know as Medicaid, for those in need, would also be expanded. “The medicare bill will not solve all the problems of growing old—but it will certainly make the process much less costly to the elderly,” TIME noted. And that wasn’t all it did, the magazine continued. The medicare bill represented a fundamental change to American political norms:
Read the full story, here in the TIME Vault: The New Welfare State Get our History Newsletter. Put today's news in context and see highlights from the archives.Thank you!For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Write to Lily Rothman at . What was Johnson's Society program?Federal funds were sent to struggling communities to attack unemployment and illiteracy. As he campaigned in 1964, Johnson declared a "war on poverty." He challenged Americans to build a "Great Society" that eliminated the troubles of the poor.
What is the name of a series of programs by LBJ to help the poor and disadvantaged?The Great Society was an ambitious series of policy initiatives, legislation and programs spearheaded by President Lyndon B. Johnson with the main goals of ending poverty, reducing crime, abolishing inequality and improving the environment.
Which President Johnson's programs provided medical care to Americans 65 years and older and was funded by the federal government?On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Medicare, a health insurance program for elderly Americans, into law.
What program was launched in the early 1960s to assist people in the poorest parts of the world?War on Poverty, expansive social welfare legislation introduced in the 1960s by the administration of U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson and intended to help end poverty in the United States.
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What program did Johnson create to provide healthcare for the elderly and poor?
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