A Short History of the Health Care Debate

Franklin Roosevelt identified health care as a right, but never pushed for it. Harry Truman campaigned for a government program, but it was under Dwight Eisenhower that employers began to offer health insurance as a tax-free benefit.


John Kennedy introduced the initial Medicare legislation, which did not pass. Notice that he compares the American health care system unfavorably to those in Europe.






Harry Truman was the first president to actively champion universal health care. Although it was a central part of his epic 1948 campaign, Truman never proposed actual legislation. Members of his administration devised the original concept of Medicare, and in 1965, Truman became the first American to enroll in the program:


Richard Nixon's health care plan, though not passed, changed the terms of the debate from government-driven universal care to general access through the private insurance system, the approach eventually adopted by President Obama. Don't miss the closing remarks in this video.


Bill Clinton, as ever conversant in policy matters, summarizes the pros and cons of different approaches to universal health care. Clinton's own attempt at health care reform collapsed under attacks from the health insurance industry and a unified Republican opposition. Ironically, one Republican alternative featured the mandates that the party later decried as socialism when proposed by Barack Obama.


March 23, 2010: Barack Obama signs health care reform into law 62 years after Harry Truman made the first serious proposal to guarantee health care to all Americans:


Mercy and old City Park oaks near Marconi and Harrison...

Whitman, as Whitman would have wanted (thanks, Editilla)...

HBD to JMG...


Turbulent April...

Harry Truman campaigning for president in 1948:

What's In A Word?

Forty-five years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress on national television, urging them to pass legislation that guaranteed the voting rights of all Americans regardless of color. A determined and pugnacious Johnson rocked back and forth like a heavyweight looking for an opening as he admonished Congress for taking eight months to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and demanded that it pass voting rights legislation expeditiously. He got his wish: The 1965 Voting Rights Act passed both houses in less than four months.

The immediate impetus for Johnson's speech was the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, which deteriorated into mayhem before it got out of Selma. An appalled nation watched televised accounts of police attacking peaceful marchers with clubs, police dogs, and fire hoses. Johnson seized the opportunity to deliver one of the most momentous speeches of the American presidency. In the first five minutes of the speech, Johnson cut to the chase: "There is no Negro problem...there is only an American problem." About a minute into the speech, he framed the events in Selma as a pivotal event in the American fight for freedom:

At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.

Watch:


To southern politicians, Johnson's reference to Appomattox must have felt like a battering ram to the solar plexus. By invoking Lee's surrender to Grant, he sent the message that the Civil War had not been about states rights; it had been about ending slavery and extending freedom to all Americans. With that single word, he undercut the white South's entire rationale for opposing civil rights legislation, aligning it with slavery and injustice. With that single word, he forged a connection between the ideals of the Revolution, the fight to end slavery, and the fight to extend political rights to all. In effect, Johnson exposed the southern deification of states rights as a lie to rationalize injustice.

Worse for them, Johnson was a southern politician himself, so no segregationist could complain that a carpetbagging northerner was imposing his values on a southern way of life. That, combined with the images from Selma, swept away the fiction -- the lies, really -- that the south had and would continue to have racial harmony if only they were left to their own devices.

Johnson was nothing if not a masterful politician who well understood the import and effect of political language. He had alternatives to Appomattox: He could have selected from among such uncontroversial and more immediate patriotic locales as San Juan Hill, Chateau-Thierry,  and Normandy. But by choosing Appomattox, he sent a message to the white south: From here on in, they had a choice of being on the right side of history or the wrong side of history. But they should be under no illusions that they were on the moral side of events...

My father remembers the speech well. We lived in Columbus, Ohio at the time, little knowing that soon we would be Texans ourselves. Dad watched it on television and thought it was great. He listed Johnson's many accomplishments in education, civil rights, and health care, then -- like almost every liberal of his generation -- lamented that Vietnam had destroyed a potentially great presidency...

No one knew it then, but 1965 was to date the historical high water mark for the liberal presidency. Johnson was immensely popular: When he flew to Detroit for a speech, cheering throngs lined his route from the airport. In addition to the Voting Rights Act, 1965 saw major federal initiatives in education and the passage of Medicare/Medicaid...

You can write to the Texas Education Agency to express concern about the content of Texas textbooks, which will ripple out to many other states. The link is here...

End Game?

Another impressive Tuesday for Barack Obama; he took a small but clear lead in the delegate count while showing signs of cutting into Clinton's base. Clinton's back is to the wall: Obama will likely win the February 19 Wisconsin primary, which means she'll have to win convincingly in Ohio and Texas to keep her superdelegates from bolting. I'm not sure she has to win as big as the pundits are saying -- why would anyone withdraw after winning any kind of victory?  -- but narrow wins leave her vulnerable to a fast fade.

McCain's general election problems against Obama are obvious. Look at the two pictures above: One of a youthful, gifted politician reaching out to enthusiastic young people, the other of a near comatose septuagenarian senator celebrating with an octagenarian senator (John Warner of Virginia) and Florida governor Charlie Crist. If this election is about change, who of the two is more likely to deliver it?

In 1968, the Wisconsin primary played a key role in unseating a sitting president. After narrowly beating Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary, Lyndon Johnson foresaw defeat in the upcoming Wisconsin primary and decided not to pursue a second term. Read about it here, and even if you don't, be sure to scroll down to the pictures. Johnson's address to the nation announcing his decision not to pursue another term is here (scroll down to the March 31, 1968 speech).

Monday evening, T. and I went to a fundraiser for Darcy Burner, Democratic congressional candidate in Washington's 8th District. Two-term incumbent Dave Reichert, described by conservative pundit Robert Novak as "a former sheriff of King County, Wash., who has not distinguished himself during three years in Congress," is a walking, barely breathing definition of the term "empty suit." (Check out this video, in which he has no answer to...well, you have to see it to believe it.) Burner, on the other hand, is knowledgeable, passionate, and energetic. She's raised more money than Reichert, will outwork him, and stands poised to knock him off his perch.

Now is the time for your tears: We're so desperate for troops that we're pulling Iraq veterans out of psychiatric care and sending them back to Baghdad. Read it and weep.