Truman tried to get a national health care system going and received tremendous resistance from the American Medical Association, which ran a slick campaign that it was all socialism (or worse). And later when working to get Medicare enacted Johnson ran into the same opposition, including loud criticism from a certain actor turned polit…
Truman tried to get a national health care system going and received tremendous resistance from the American Medical Association, which ran a slick campaign that it was all socialism (or worse). And later when working to get Medicare enacted Johnson ran into the same opposition, including loud criticism from a certain actor turned politician named Reagan. (When it passed the first person signed up was Truman.) I suspect the long term plan was to keep dropping the age of eligibility for Medicare at one end, while raising the years one was eligible at the other, until everybody was covered. But that didn't happen. One would think the examples of Medicare and V.A. services would show that socialized medicine can work, at least for the basics, but somehow that message just doesn't get across to the average American.
Truman tried to get a national health care system going and received tremendous resistance from the American Medical Association, which ran a slick campaign that it was all socialism (or worse). And later when working to get Medicare enacted Johnson ran into the same opposition, including loud criticism from a certain actor turned politician named Reagan. (When it passed the first person signed up was Truman.) I suspect the long term plan was to keep dropping the age of eligibility for Medicare at one end, while raising the years one was eligible at the other, until everybody was covered. But that didn't happen. One would think the examples of Medicare and V.A. services would show that socialized medicine can work, at least for the basics, but somehow that message just doesn't get across to the average American.