Which Party Supports The Principle Of Medicare?

Click here for an article in The Washington Post blog, The Plum Line, by Paul Waldman, entitled "Medicare just turned 54. Let’s remember what Republicans said about it."

Medicare was passed in July 1965, when the Democrats enjoyed huge majorities in Congress -- 295/140 in the House and 68/32 in the Senate. Johnson praised it at the time he signed the bill, saying:

No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years. No longer will young families see their own incomes, and their own hopes, eaten away simply because they are carrying out their deep moral obligations to their parents, and to their uncles, and their aunts. And no longer will this Nation refuse the hand of justice to those who have given a lifetime of service and wisdom and labor to the progress of this progressive country.

But the Republicans fought against it with everything they had. Here's what a rising Republican star -- Ronald Reagan, who would be elected to the first of his two terms as governor of California the following year, 1966 -- had to say on the subject:

“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine,” he warned in a famous radio address. If Medicare were not stopped, Reagan said, “one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

Republicans have made concerted efforts over the years to rid America of this cesspool of socialism, but with little effect. As Waldman says:

Today there are 59 million people on Medicare and 73 million on Medicaid [132 million people], combining to make up a full 40 percent of the American population. So guess what: We have the socialism Reagan warned about, just not for everyone.

And yet that paragon of honesty, President Donald J. Trump, "wrote in a 2018 op-ed that was stunningly dishonest even for him, 'I also made a solemn promise to our great seniors to protect Medicare. That is why I am fighting so hard against the Democrats’ plan that would eviscerate Medicare.'"