President Obama Is Making Great Progress On Healthcare Reform Compared To JFK/LBJ's Medicare Effort!

I often see President Obama compared unfavorably to Lyndon B. Johnson with respect to Medicare. The simplistic reasoning gives Lyndon Johnson sole credit for the development and passage of Medicare. However, such analysis reflects either historical illiteracy or an agenda to disparage President Obama's current efforts to reform our health care system.

The fact of the matter is that health care reform was the cornerstone of President Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1960 and followed President Truman's more ambitious efforts to provide universal coverage. President Kennedy campaigned on Medicare, and in 1961 called for the enactment of "measures to provide health care for the elderly ... this year." President Kennedy initiated a series of rallies and public relation efforts to secure the passage of Medicare in 1962, but these efforts (you guessed it) bogged down in Congress. A conservative coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans were able to stymie the passage of Medicare. In November 1963, JFK was assassinated. Despite the outpouring of grief, Lyndon Johnson still was unable to pass Medicare prior to the 1964 election. However, after his landslide victory in 1964, Lyndon Johnson was able to secure the passage of Medicare in 1965 five years after President Kennedy ran on it in 1960, and vowed to get it passed this year in 1961!

Here is a Washington Post article reviewing some of the polling data behind the fight for Medicare, which demonstrates that it was not the slam dunk that President Obama's critics suggest. After all, health care for seniors seems like a political slam dunk, but it was not. It was a five year fight that was aided in part by the outpouring of support following President Kennedy's assassination. Even with President Johnson's resounding victory, public opinion on Medicare took a long time to evolve toward being moderately, but not overwhelmingly, supportive over a period of five years with a charismatic Kennedy and a veteran political insider in Lyndon Johnson.

When seen in proper historical context, President Obama's efforts at reforming health care are extremely impressive. If judged against the standard currently being applied to President Obama, then JFK/LBJ appear absolutely incompetent, since it took them over five years to pass a bill that on its face sounds like a political slam dunk, health care for the elderly, and since they reflected a dramatic reduction in scope from earlier efforts under President Truman to provide for universal healthcare coverage back in 1945.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2009/07/health_care_reform_circa_1965.html

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Health Care Reform Circa 1965: Polling on Medicare
The political battle lasted for years. After one young Democratic president's attempt to change the way some Americans get their health care failed, the fight was revived following the election of another Democrat a few years later. Some favored a government run program. Others backed a plan operated by private insurers, with government-funded subsidies to assist those with lower-incomes in paying their premiums. It all came to a head by July... 1965.

The program was Medicare, and sparring over its passage - 44 years ago this month - closely resembles the debate taking place in Washington today as the House and Senate roll out their versions of health care reform.

A July 1962 Gallup poll found mixed feelings about President John F. Kennedy's proposal, 28 percent said they held generally favorable views of his plan, 24 percent were generally unfavorable, and a sizable plurality (33 percent) said they didn't have an opinion on it or hadn't heard about the plan. A month later, after Congress had rejected Kennedy's proposal, an Opinion Research Corporation poll found 44 percent said the plan should have passed, while 37 percent felt Congress did the right thing.

* * *

Following Pres. Lyndon Johnson's election, Americans remained somewhat divided on the plan, with 46 percent telling Harris pollsters in Feb. 1965 that they'd prefer "a Federal law which would provide medical care for the aged by a special tax, like Social Security" and 36 percent more inclined to support "a plan of expanded private health insurance." Then, as now, Democrats were more apt to favor the government option (58 percent) than were Republicans (27 percent).

Asked another way, 62 percent said they favored "President Johnson's program of medical care for the aged under Social Security." A smaller majority, 56 percent, backed the American Medical Association's alternative plan, which would have "everyone who could afford it covered by private health insurance" and "those who couldn't afford it ...covered under a government health plan."

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Thank you for posting this enlightening bit of history!

:kick:

Not his inaugeration speech. JFK did campaign for medicare prior to his election, of course.

The missile crisis, civil rights movement, Bay of Pigs invasion, the fight against organized crime, having his head blown up, etc.. I think those events kinda got on his way a bit.

Not comparable.

Again, when I weigh the events of the past two years and the events of the 60's, I fail to see now the urgency of the early 60's.

We're talking about an economic crisis 30 years in the making.

We're talking about two wars.

We're talking about a situation that was nearing the brink in the Middle East.

We're talking about instability in Iran.

We're talking about the possibility of instability in North Korea.

We're talking about healthcare reform.

And fixing that 30 year economic crisis.

I'm sorry, but while Kennedy faced a great deal, I do not believe it is comparable.

Pres. Obama walked into a disaster. Kennedy didn't.

Sometimes I just shake my head.

The situation in the early 60's was extremely tense against the superpower that was Russia (and trust me, they DID have WMD) and Cuba, which is a few miles from here.

We weren't sending trillions of dollars over to Russia. We weren't sending troops to two countries to fight fully advanced wars.

There were dustups and scares, but that's about it.

What about the possibility of a nuclear Iran & and a nuclear North Korea?

How about Israel and Iran potentially going at it?

What about Israel and Palestine?

These all directly impact Obama and he has to deal with these issues daily, along with the domestic problems here (you know, large unemployment, healthcare, economic woes)...

It's because Kennedy was busy making negotiations and taking preventive measures to avoid it.

But it wasn't.

Unless you believe Reagan had more on his plate than Obama, too.

Since, you know, we still had to 'negotiate' with the Soviets.

The Reagan situation is not comparable to the specific, extremely tense early 60's era I mentioned.
The Afghans were handling Russia.

And duh. Of course my point would be even stronger if there had been a real war. Doesn't make the cold war scenario less urgent than the war with No-WMD Iraq and Afghanistan.

You're using two moments to prove Kennedy had more on his plate. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't even a month.

Tensions were high, but Obama has to deal with Iraq and Afghanistan every single day of his presidency. He has to deal with the domestic economic crisis - which is far greater than it was when Kennedy was president - every single day.

You make it sound like Pres. Obama has nothing on his plate. That healthcare reform is the only thing he has to do.

Bullshit!

wake up...

There's no cold war with Pakistan either.

And they are our allies. You may cite the hypothetical that the Taliban will topple the Pakistani government, will get a hold of the nukes and start working on a system that may help those weapons reach our cities.



Sounds much less scary, doesn't it?

Do you friggin remember 9/11? Do you think that all the shit going on around the world is make believe?

Get a grip.

9/11/2001.

Al Qaeda is on the run. The Taliban owned Afghanistan at the moment, and gave shelter to Bin Laden.
The situation is much different now. The mere presence of Obama makes us safer, since Bush was hated with passion by the world, with good reason.

"The situation is much different now. The mere presence of Obama makes us safer, since Bush was hated with passion by the world, with good reason."

Exactly what are you arguing? Obama doesn't have much to do, but his mere presence makes us safer?

I argue that he has less urgent things to do than JFK. Your accusation that I said he "doesn't have much to do" is false.

Everything I claim in regard to the current situation is relative to the early 60's, because this thread focuses on a comparision.

who we know had a depression-like economic crisis, the two wars, extremism that JFK had to deal with...wait: What?

Your argument is completly bogus.

Refer to my earlier posts.

You think these events are more difficult to handle, I think the opposite. As simple as that.

how else would you be able to continue arguing nonsense?

I guess you can debate the subjective merits of whether foreign policy is less complicated now than in the 1960s, but your general point appears to be that it was okay for JFK/LBJ to take five years because they had a lot on their plate. Well, by that same calculus, I am sure that you would agree that with President Obama still aiming to sign a bill by the end of the year, he is making fantastic progress.

Remember, this is a comparison. Analyzing Obama by himself or JFK by himself would be beyond the scope of our debate.

The argument is that President Johnson was (Re)elected in 1964, took his oath of office in 1965, and Shazzam! Medicare! Why can't President Obama do that now?

My point (and your point apparently) is that the enactment of Medicare was a lot more complicated, and it stretched over five years due in part to the fact that Presidents then (as now) must multi-task. No argument from me on this point. Thus, when analyzed in proper historical context, President Obama's progress on health care reform is hardly slow by historical standards.

Times and circumstances differ. Every President has a set of challenges they have to overcome. The Medicare debate actually took a lot longer than five years, as it picked up steam again in the 50s.

The economic crisis and the budget deficit are also factors in the debate over health reform.

The story suggests once again that LBJ was able to quickly and easily pass Medicare even though it was a five year process to do so. By this metric, President Obama is making extremely fast progress.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/24/johnson.lbj.health.care/index.html

My God, what will it take to get through? :shrug:

We were extremely fortunate he didn't get us into a nuclear holocaust. The U.S. was NOT an innocent party, they were busy putting missiles in Turkey which led to the Soviet Union countering with missiles in Cuba

Of course he had the sense to realize that with this game of chicken no one would be a winner, but we should never have been put into that situation in the first place

Speaking of "games of chicken where no one would be a winner.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/19/AR2009081903066.html?hpid=topnews

I see a lot of random facts being thrown against the wall, but nothing that suggests that Lyndon Johnson's passage of Medicare was easy. In fact, you seem to be arguing that it was very hard for JFK/LBJ because they had a lot of things on his plate. Heck, it took them five years! With President Obama inheriting two wars, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and a record deficit from Bush, the fact that we are aiming for a bill before the end of the year is quite amazing, don't you think?

Afterall, as you note, JFK/LBJ had a lot on their plate, and it took them a combined five years to pass Medicare.

I have limited myself to comparing the magnitude of the problems in the early 60's and these 7 months.
In your view the early 60's pale in comparison to the present. I hold the opposite view, although both had things to take care of.

The Bay of Pigs was orchestrated and executed with the assistance of the CIA during Kennedy's first three months in office. Indeed, the Bay of Pigs invasion may have helped precipitate the subsequent Cuban Missle crisis. I don't understand your reasoning here. Are you saying that JFK/LBJ get a free pass on healthcare because they really screwed up with the Bay of Pigs invasion?

Also, you don't really have any cites or analysis that actually show that the Cuban missle crisis prevented the passage of Medicare. Please explain.

.

when LBJ did make headway, he had a 66 and 68 Democratic majority to work with. Could you imagine if Obama 68 Dems in the Senate?

I have no idea. But it matters. Can someone put it in context? Simply saying, "LBJ had sixty something senators on his side" is not enough. Were those Southern Democrats more conservative than the Souther Democrats we have these days?

If it turns out that Democrats were more conservative back then, LBJ would then get credit for breaking that barrier and passing Medicare.

Having a 66 or 68 seat Democratic majority in the mid-sixties was likely much more difficult to deal with in terms of passing liberal legislation than the current 60 seat majority. Certainly we still have plenty of corporate whores in the Senate, but only a handful of true DINO's. When LBJ was president, just about every Senator from a southern or "border" (in the Civil War sense of the word) state was still a "Democrat" out of tradition, even if the majority of them were ideologically more in line with the conservatives in the Republican Party. (The only exceptions being Thurmond from SC, Tower from TX, and KY's two Republicans.) Despite being substantially out of step with the goals of the national Democratic Party, they made up a pretty sizable chunk of the Democrats' Senate majority.

LBJ was a Southern Democrat who had spent nearly 15 years in the Senate. He had a lot more sway with the Democratic majority. Having a super majority also helped.

Which in your view complicates matters for a Democrat.

Unlike Obama?

Stop trying to spin nonsense.

Remember, this sub-thread started with a question I asked regarding how conservative Democrats were in the early 60's in comparision to the present.

You think it's hard for Obama being a northern liberal. Fine. But how much harder was it for JFK?

I said this was a crucial point. You seem not to know the answer.

"You think it's hard for Obama being a northern liberal. Fine. But how much harder was it for JFK? "

You know what: Kennedy had his challenges to face and so does Obama.

Hell, there are U.S. Senators pushing the notion that he isn't a citizen and is trying to kill grandma.

before we can come to any clear answer.

But you can laugh at your own joke if you want.

In order to determine how difficult it was for LBJ and Kennedy to pass legislation we would have to know what kind of Democrats they dealt with. It seems that you have no clue as to the answer. Or do you?

just playing your game of

1) declare something to be a fact

2) continue debate as if everyone else has accepted 1.

Or, are you making a Spinal Tap type argument that while conservatism only goes to ten now, it went to 11 back then? The whole point of my original post was that it is mistake to assume that Medicare sprang into existence in just President Johnson's first year after he was elected. Indeed, to a certain extent, it represented a compromise from President Truman's far more ambitious goals of universal healthcare coverage, and it still took five years. By comparison, President Obama is still aiming for passage before the end of the year! Assuming that Medicare was slapped together in 1965 is false assumption, and such an assumption forms an inappropriate yardstick.

got support from New England Republicans from the start. Those Southern Democrats were conservative on many issues and most were blatant racists but many had supported Truman's efforts to extend health care and were with LBJ from the jump