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PAGE CONTENTS:
Social
Security Begins
History of Medicare and Medicaid
Medicare and the Neo-Cons
Social Security Begins
The Great Depression was no picnic for any worker, but
it was especially hard on older Americans. Many saw their life savings evaporate practically overnight when thousands of banks
failed and the stock market crashed. With their savings gone, these workers needed every paycheck. But once businesses started
going under, too, there were fewer jobs to go around--and no one was looking to hire old hands. While the general unemployment
rate in 1932 was 25 percent, the rate for men 65 and older who were looking for work was a shocking 54 percent. Past generations,
living on farms with extended families, might have been able to cope. Unlike factories, farm
families accommodated changes in the capacity of their workers. If Grandma wasn't strong enough to help with the harvest,
she could spin the wool into yarn and knit warm socks. But, when rural folks started moving off farms to work in factories
and shops, many older Americans lost that family support. As
part of the package of New Deal reforms that aimed to protect destitute Americans, the federal
government began to design a program in 1934 to pay a small monthly benefit to people 65 and older. It was not such a radical
idea. By 1935, 24 states had already set up "old-age pension" systems. "We can never insure 100 percent of the
population against 100 percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life," President Franklin D. Roosevelt said when he
signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935. "But we have tried to frame a law which
will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden
old age." Under this new program, workers in "commerce and industry" would receive a monthly check
after they retired at age 65. For the first few years of the program, only about half the jobs in the economy were included
and only the worker was covered. It would be several more years before benefits would be paid to workers' spouses and
survivors. From the beginning, Social Security was funded
by a payroll tax. In the late 1930s, both employers and employees paid 1 percent on the first
$3,000 of annual earnings. (That $3,000 is equal to about $45,000 of annual earnings today.) But how to keep track of all those workers?
Each one had to be registered and issued a Social Security number. Local post offices stepped in to handle this job, delivering
applications to every household in 1936 and issuing more than 35 million Social Security cards by the end of 1937. People who
retired in the first couple of years of the program got back what they paid in, plus a little extra, in a lump sum. The average
lump was pretty small--less than $60--and at least one worker got a check for a nickel. In 1940, the first monthly benefit
checks went out. Today, tens of millions of Americans are recipients of Social Security checks. by Colleen Kelly KnowledgeNews is brought to you by Every Learner, Inc., an independent small business dedicated to supporting
lifelong learners. Copyright © 2009, Every Learner, Inc. All rights reserved.
Note: Ida May Fuller of Brattlebor, Vermont, was the first U.S. citizen to receive a Social Security
check. She lived to be over 100 and collected her first check in 1940. She collected over $20,000 in total benefits.
History of Medicare
and Medicaid
How Did Medicare and Medicaid Get Started?
In the first half of the 20th century, there were several failed attempts to create a national
health insurance system in the United States. But the first government-run health insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid,
didn't pass Congress until 1965--and even then they were controversial.
Theodore Roosevelt, running for president
on a progressive platform, first called for some form of national health insurance in 1912. Two decades later, during the
Great Depression, progressives under Franklin Delano Roosevelt called for it again--as part of the newly proposed Social Security
system. But ultimately, all health insurance provisions were dropped from the bill to get Social Security passed in 1935.
Some form of national health insurance certainly fit within Roosevelt's notion of "social security."
In fact, in 1944, he actually called for "a second Bill of Rights" during his State of the Union address. This "economic
Bill of Rights" would include "the right to adequate medical care." But Roosevelt died in office in 1945, before
he could take any action.
Harry Truman became president after Roosevelt and called for that action. Before long,
there was a bill to add national health insurance to Social Security, and it had Truman's active support. But a House
subcommittee called the plan a communist plot, and the American Medical Association (AMA) called it "socialized medicine."
With the rise of the Cold War and fear of communism, the bill was soundly defeated.
After that, proponents of national
health insurance, realizing that a universal plan had little chance of passing Congress, began attempting incremental reform.
In 1960, Congress passed the Kerr-Mills Act to help the elderly cover medical expenses. It was federally funded, but each
state had to tell the government who was eligible, because recipients had to be below a certain income and meet other requirements.
Emboldened, President John F. Kennedy pushed for a broader plan, and Congress responded with a plan to cover all seniors
without a means test, funded through Social Security. The AMA was once again opposed and hired Ronald Reagan to be its spokesman
for "Operation Coffee Cup."
In a 1961 record made for the AMA, Reagan said, "One of the traditional
methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical
program as a humanitarian project." Kennedy went on TV to argue the opposite, but the bill went down to defeat.
Finally, in 1965, when half of senior citizens were without health insurance, Congress and President Lyndon Johnson
proposed a national health insurance plan for the elderly that would reimburse hospitals and doctors for their "usual
and customary" fee. At the same time, it proposed a joint state-federal plan that would provide medical care for the
poor.
After much debate, the legislation passed--as the Social Security Act of 1965. It made two amendments to
the original Social Security Act. Title 18 included two parts. Part A provided compulsory hospital insurance to all
seniors. Part B provided them with supplemental medical insurance. Together, these were known as Medicare.
Title
19 provided grants to voluntarily participating states to cover medical insurance for families living in poverty in that state.
Each state would oversee its own program and choose how the program met the federal requirements for funding. This
joint federal-state plan was called Medicaid.
Today, as of 2009, 35.3 million seniors (and 7.7 million disabled
people) are enrolled in Medicare. About 42.6 million people are enrolled in Medicaid, more than half of whom are children.
All told, 85.6 million people get coverage in these programs.
--Rebecca Bigelow
KnowledgeNews is brought to you by Every Learner, Inc., an independent small business dedicated to supporting lifelong
learners. Copyright © 2009, Every Learner, Inc. All rights reserved.
Medicare and the Neo-Cons
We know there will be bumps in the road…It's
a new program... This is going very well." These were the words of the spokesmen for the Center for Medicare regarding
their new Medicare programs. By all accounts it seems obvious that the neo-cons are incapable of governing. Everything
they touch is tainted with incompetence. But, in fairness I wondered, is this is just the way governments function. An article
by Jonathan Cohn, the senior editor of the New Republic, which is certainly no liberal publication, provides a clue. It points
out that when the Medicare programs of the Johnson administration began everything went quite smoothly.
There
were concerns about the program, since after all this was new to everyone, and the problems were many including what might
happen in the segregated south. Guess what? Hundreds of thousands of people went to the hospital and everything worked.
"There were no crises that I remember," said Yale University professor, Theodore Marmor. He is backed up by newspaper
accounts of the day. "Medicare Takes Over Easily," said the New York Post calling it as "undramatic as a bed
change." Three weeks later the New York Times reported, "Medicare's Start Has Been Smooth."
So what is the difference in the administrations? Let's start with the
fact that the program was set up to make money for corporations. Next, let us look at the man who used to run the program
Tom Scully who became a lobbyist immediately after the bill passed. Who was he working for? It does not seem to be the public.
Stanford McClellan, who like the famous Brownie, has no experience in implementing social-insurance programs, replaced him.
So either they were concerned with themselves, as Scully was, or they did not have the necessary experience.
So
who implemented the "Great Society" program? President Johnson picked Robert Ball who had been in government since
1939. He was a professional who knew the ins and outs of government and the potential problems that might arise. He urged
that the programs begin in the summer when the hospital are the least crowded. It makes sense to me! So LBJ chose a pro and
the neo-cons, in their arrogance, feel everything that has gone on before them is wrong. Would you, I ask, hire someone who
has no experience to fix your car?
Another difference, and this comes from experience as well, was that the LBJ
team drew up plans in case things did not go well. There, as I see it, is one of the big differences. The Bush team refuses
to even acknowledge there could be problems. Remember the Dick Cheney statement that we will be welcomed as liberators in
Iraq. That, I say, is but one example of many where the Bush the team had not set up a proper game plan. They seem to be arrogant
in their stupidity and were warned about this so their failure to have back up plans is an act of gross negligence.
Robert Ball who managed the LBJ program said about the Bush program. "I would not have dreamed of going into this in
a way that meant individuals had to choose from all these possibilities. I would have expected chaos." Obviously, Ball
was right and it makes you wonder if anyone ever spoke to this man about the possible problems. History is important because
you can go back and see if things had to be the way they are and history illustrates to us that they do not.
Sources, Jonathan Cohn, The New Republic
Copyright 2006 by PENN LLC. All rights reserved. Go ahead and forward this, in its entirety, to others.
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