Medicare: 35 Years of Service

For persons who are trying to understand what we were up to, the first broad point to keep in mind is that all of us who developed Medicare and fought for it had been advocates of universal national health insurance. We all saw insurance for the elderly as a fallback position, which we advocated solely because it seemed to have the best chance politically. Although the public record contains some explicit denials, we expected Medicare to be a first step toward universal national health insurance, perhaps with “Kiddicare” as another step... President Franklin Roosevelt feared that health insurance was so controversial, because of doctors’ opposition, that if he included it in his program for economic security he might lose the entire program. Robert M. Ball, Social Security Commissioner under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, 1995