JFK PROPOSES NATIONAL HEALTH CARE FOR OLDER CITIZENS
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) On January 26, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy introduced a bill which would have provided insurance for seniors against increasing health care costs.
Senator Kennedy said...
"I introduce...a bill to... provide insurance for our older citizens. It is obvious that the later years of too many of our citizens will be attended by hardship (at the) time of life when the need for health care rises sharply."
JFK explained that medical care costs were up 52% and hospital care costs were up 110%. Under the bill, seniors would have received 90 days of health care annually as well as 120 days of nursing care in addition to other benefits.
Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that his proposed health care program for seniors, like all such programs, was dependent upon "all persons and all ages" to be enrolled so that premiums could be paid over the many years of "youthful good health."
JFK was not the first to propose such a plan. According to Steve Anderson of Medicare Resources, Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party platform of 1912 called for a national health proposal but the idea "didn't gain steam" until President Harry Truman proposed the Federal Government cover doctor, hospital, lab and nursing costs for seniors. Truman's proposal of November 1945, however, fell on deaf ears in the Congress.
Fifteen years later, studies revealed that 56% of Americans 65 and over were NOT covered by health insurance. According to Rosemary Stevens of the University of Pennsylvania..."in the early 1960s, the choices for uninsured elderly patients needing hospital services were to...spend their savings,
rely on funding from their children, seek welfare, hope for charity from the hospital or avoid medical care altogether."
And as far as those seniors who did have health insurance, Dorothy Pechman Rice, former Director of the National Center for Health Statistics, says they "had...terrible insurance (which) didn't do much to cover them."
While JFK was no more successful than TR or Truman in getting his national health insurance plan for seniors through Congress, President Lyndon B. Johnson would sign Medical Care for the Aged (Medicare)* into law.
*Medical Care for the Aged (Medicare) is a national healthcare program which began in 1966 administered under the Social Security Administration. Today Medicare is under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services & covers more than 58 million Americans 65+ & 9 million younger individuals.
SOURCES
"A brief history of Medicare in America," by Steve Anderson, March 4, 2015, www.medicareresources.org/
"For Release to PM Newspapers of Tuesday," January 26, 1960, Office of Senator John F. Kennedy, www.jfklibrary.org/
"Were the early 1960s a golden age for health care?" by Louis Jacobson, January 20, 2012, www.politifact.com/
New Medicare Card (2018)
www.medicare.gov/
