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Medicare and Medicaid programs signed into law.

1965

The Story of Disability Justice
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President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Medicare and Medicaid into law. This is the result of a long political struggle that began shortly after the Depression to prevent profit from reigning as the primary motive for healthcare provision.

While health insurance was originally intended to be part of the Social Security Act in 1935, it was dropped after the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) called national health insurance a "revolutionary” and “Bolshevik” menace to public health, thereby "undermining traditional American values of individualism and self-reliance" (Fee, 2015).

Medicare is enacted to provide hospital and medical care for everyone older than 65, and is administered by the federal government. Meanwhile, Medicaid is intended to pay the costs of doctor visits and hospital admission fees for low-income people, and is administered by individual states.