Over the next several years, hospitalization rates rose to comparable levels. More than 1,000 Medicare and Public Health Service staff worked with hospitals to make sure they understood they would have to serve all Americans when they signed up for the federally funded Medicare program.īlack hospitalization rates were about 70 percent of white hospitalization rates in the program's first few years. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act (recipients of Federal funds are prohibited from discrimination based on race) in 1964 and Medicare (the source of the Federal funds) in 1965, minorities were able to receive health care in the same hospitals and clinics used by white persons. Segregation denied minorities access to the same health care as white persons. Reflecting on the amount of time that had transpired, Johnson noted at the ceremony: “We marvel not simply at the passage of this bill, but what we marvel at is that it took so many years to pass it.” ( Harris, 1966a). In honor of President Truman's leadership, President Johnson flew to the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri to sign the bill into law on Jand presented the first two Medicare cards to former President Truman and Mrs. The earlier efforts towards national health reform finally resulted in coverage for the elderly (Medicare) and the poor (Medicaid), with advocates hoping that coverage would be expanded to other population groups at a later date. President Kennedy's 1963 proposal for health care for the elderly passed the Senate in 1964, but failed in the House.Īfter more than a decade of debate on health insurance for the elderly, when Johnson was elected President in 1964, he asked Congress to give Medicare top priority. President Eisenhower was opposed to social insurance for health care in 1954, he proposed a Federal reinsurance plan for private insurance companies. By the end of Truman's term, in 1952, Medicare was proposed as a scaled down version of national health insurance that would cover all Social Security beneficiaries-the elderly, widows, and orphans. In 1945, President Truman endorsed this bill and became the first president to send a national health insurance bill to the Congress. This work was subsequently incorporated into a national health insurance bill introduced in the Congress in 1943-commonly referred to as the Wagner, Murray, Dingell bill ( Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1965). Roosevelt decided not to include health insurance in his proposed Social Security Act in 1934, he authorized his staff to do additional work on the proposal, including consultations with a broad array of groups ( Corning, 1969).
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