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News Index
August 26, 2009
Medicare opponents Ronald Reagan was tried to end
Medicare for old people!
Reagan cut his national teeth opposing Medicare and
rallying
Republicans against it.
One of the big fears among those crowding town hall meetings this summer
is that their coverage under Medicare will be cut back. The debate was
just as
passionate 45 years ago, when Congress was considering creating Medicare
during the Lyndon Johnson administration.
James Morone, co-author of The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in
the Oval Office, tells Renee Montagne that Johnson's Medicare push is
"one of the
great untold stories."
In his research for the book, Morone listened to phone conversations
that Johnson secretly taped in the White House — including a discussion
Johnson
had with a young senator from Massachusetts: Ted Kennedy.
I've looked at some of the stuff that's being considered from the press
and other people, and it looks like to me that you are approaching it
right and that
you're getting it in shape -- and I just say this, that there's not
anything that's happened in my six months, or that will happen in the
whole term, in my
judgment, that will mean more to us as a party or me or you as
individuals than this piece of legislation.
- President Lyndon Johnson to Congressman Wilbur Mills
Renee Montagne: What happened in the middle 1960s — was [Medicare] an
idea whose time had come?
James Morone: Several things happened. One thing, the Democratic
landslide of 1964, LBJ running against [Barry] Goldwater, and the
Democrats swept into
office. But a second thing happened, and that's Lyndon Baines Johnson in
the White House. He was brilliant at maneuvering Medicare through
[Congress],
and that's one of the great untold stories. It was a president who was
very adept in the White House, who managed to make it happen.
Give us an example of Lyndon Johnson in action.
When Lyndon Johnson is elected, the first thing he decides is he wants
Medicare, and he knows he needs Congressman Wilbur Mills (D-AR),
chairman of the
Ways and Means Committee. Mills has single-handedly fought Medicare and
kept it bottled up in his committee. Johnson calls him and tries to get
Medicare out of it, and Wilbur says, "I can't, I've been fighting this
thing, I'll look like a fool." And Johnson has the idea to triple the
size of Medicare, to
take the Republican proposals and add them on. And the two of them —
these veteran, brilliant legislators — they concoct this whole new
proposal that's
the administration proposal plus the Republican proposals.
There are tapes of Johnson showing a different side of how he worked
[Medicare's passage].
Johnson maneuvered every step of the way getting this bill through
Congress, and one of the things he did — and this is a little dicey in
today's climate —
was suppress the costs. So this young kid gets elected from
Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, in 1962, and Johnson is explaining to him
[over the phone] how
you get a health bill through. And what he tells him is don't let them
get the costs projected too far out because it will scare other people:
"A health program yesterday runs $300 million, but the fools had to go
to projecting it down the road five or six years, and when you project
it the first
year, it runs $900 million. Now I don't know whether I would approve
$900 million second year or not. I might approve 450 or 500. But the
first thing Dick
Russell comes running in saying, 'My God, you've got a billion-dollar
program for next year on health, therefore I'm against any of it now.'
Do you follow
me?"
We believe, after looking at the evidence, my co-author [David
Blumenthal] and I, that if the true cost of Medicare had been known — if
Johnson hadn't
basically hidden them — the program would never have passed. America's
second-most beloved program would never have happened, if we had had
genuine cost estimates.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It isn't as if President Johnson did not have opposition. In fact, he
had quite a bit of public opposition, a lot of hand-wringing. One of the
most prominent
Medicare opponents was Ronald Reagan, who was then a candidate for the
governor of California:
"One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a
people, has been by way of Medicare medicine. It's very easy to disguise
a medical
program as a humanitarian project — most people are a little reluctant
to oppose anything that suggests medical care for old people who possibly
can't afford
it. Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized
medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote
against it."
Socialism, socialized medicine — Medicare that is just as scary today
for a lot of people as it was in Reagan's time.
If this program passes, Reagan said in another speech, one of these
years we will tell our children and our children's children what it was
like in America
when men were free. What you have to understand, when you hear the town
hall meetings, and you hear all the anger today, is that it sounded just
the
same across the media in 1963, '64, '65 as the Medicare debate heated
up. Indeed, Reagan cut his national teeth opposing Medicare and rallying
Republicans against it.
What is different now? What are the pitfalls for opponents of the health
care overhaul, and what are the pitfalls for the Obama administration
that didn't
exist in President Johnson's time?
For one thing, the sides won't come together. The Medicare opponents
last time voted against it, but when it became inevitable, they all went
across the
aisle and voted for it. That's not likely to be true this time.
For the Republicans, the great danger is that the program passes and
becomes very popular. Democrats spent years and years feasting off
Republican
opposition to Medicare. There's even a word in Washington: medagogue. A
medagogue is someone who demagogues Medicare.
On the Democratic side, what Lyndon Johnson could do is much harder now
because the financial situation is so much more complicated. There's an
Office
of Management and Budget that projects the costs out to the penny way
off into the future. There are rules in Congress that say for every
penny you
spend, you have to find a penny in savings.
All this makes it much more difficult, but even more than all of that,
this battle is not just a battle about our health care system, it's a
battle — Waterloo, as
Sen. James DeMint (R-SC) put it — it's a battle over who is going to
control Washington.
If Obama fails, he's deeply injured — much more so than Johnson would
have been.
And if he succeeds, why, he succeeded at something that Roosevelt and
Truman and Kennedy and Carter and Clinton couldn't do. He's bigger than
life.
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=112234240&m=112234223
Comments
Before listening to this article, I was on the
fence regarding 'health care reform'. Now I am squarely against it. LBJ
and Ted Kennedy deliberately hoodwinked the American public in order to
pass a 'beloved' Medicare plan that will bankrupt our children. How will
our respected political leaders deceive us next? Reported WMD as a
pretext for war?
Joe Bennett wrote:
I have a great idea! Why don't we: 1. close all public schools. 2. Shut
down all publicly funded health care options available now. 3. let the
corporations discontinue their employer funded health plans. 4. close
the emergency room to all but the ones who have cash. 5. close the
police department and fire department. 6. don't force people to have
auto insurance. Let's see what happens!
Most of you out there complaining about the need for a health care plan
are covered because you work for a company that provides a plan for you.
There are few exceptions. If we did what I suggested, I'd have more cash
in my pockets, right now I'm healthy and I never had children in school
for which I am forced to pay. Every day we are forced to pay for things
that we personally don't use or agree with i.e. Bush's wars.
There is no great outrage over paying for public safety and schools.
What's the difference in having a publicly funded health plan, we all
would pay and no one is left out. The property taxes, income taxes and
school taxes I pay every year would mean a lot of money in my pockets.
August 26, 2009
RK Halley wrote:
Any health care must be affordable?
Any war should be affordable... Any voting rights bill should be
affordable... Any measure of desegregation should be affordable...
Torture should be affordable... Any of the M-Any's.
Progress can be put in terms of cost! Anti-progress not so much by the
general public. Nor has the cost of Private Corps. been placed in a cost
ratio against the public, and the governments $'s of responsibility.
What did worker injuries & death cost the public & government? No one
knows for sure but immense! Viet Nam will not out-ratio this new war.
Why, because many soldiers just died without advanced treatment measures
of today.
Your nation faces disease, a sickened public sector, and vast dollars
from the private sector telling why reform will cost you more dollars.
They will tell you much of our illness stems from pt. personal habits
and non-compliance.
It's bunk. Anti-progress will cost the public sector. The lumber barrons
didn't want to replant the trees they stripped out. Fast food rest. do
not want to print out their nutritional values on a menu, Doc's hate
paper work, Ins. wants profit not health care.
Like children we don't want to regulate, we'd rather just say no!
August 26, 2009
J Sims wrote:
Reagan was an anachronism...Much like MacCarthy, he could see
"Socialism"/"Socialists" in pea soup.
August 26, 2009 |
