Posted on: Wednesday, July 30, 2003

ISLAND VOICES
Medicare worth remembering

Marsha Joyner is president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Coalition in Hawai'i.

On July 30, 1965, seniors and disabled people living on the edge of freedom moved in a little closer to security when President Lyndon B. Johnson, accompanied by congressional and labor leaders, took off on Air Force One to the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., for the signing of the Medicare Act of 1965.

He presented President and Mrs. Truman with Medicare Cards 1 & 2.

Anniversaries indicate events and form the collective memory that, over time and across generations, shapes what a society remembers — or what it forgets.

An anniversary that serves as news ignites powerful emotional connections for those who lived through the event, communication scholar Jill Edy writes, and may be even more influential for those who did not live through the event.

As Edy notes, anniversary journalism "impacts whether we remember our past at all."

There is a generation that believes that Medicare — like other human rights — was handed down from on high. Not knowing of the sacrifices, lives that were lost, lives given in the battle for human rights in America.

In 1934, National Health Care was first introduced as a part of the "New Deal" package under President Franklin D. Roosevelt — and presented again and again every year thereafter of his three terms.

Immediately the American Medical Association was on record as opposing the National Health Care proposal.

In his last State of The Union Address (1945), the ailing President Roosevelt continued to ask for a National Health Care from "cradle to the grave." That same year the new Truman administration picked up the mantle of National Health Care and moved it forward, with opposition from the Republican Congress and the AMA.

Despite intense opposition, the administration pushed for Medicare until the end of Harry Truman's term.

There is negligible evidence to show that Medicare was even whispered about during the Eisenhower administration. In 1962, the new president, John F. Kennedy, sent a special message to Congress on health care.

Immediately — and in response —the AMA established the American Medical Political Action Committee (AMPAC).

Too soon President Kennedy was taken from us. Three days after his first State of the Union message, President Johnson proposed a massive package of legislation entitled "Advancing the Nation's Health."

Essentially, it was the same package the Kennedy administration and Democratic lawmakers had proposed, establishing Medicare as a health system under Social Security for those 65 and older.

One senator said at the time: "The pressure from the White House and the AFL/CIO came like a hailstorm." Just 204 days after LBJ sent his message to Congress, the legislation was signed into law.

Today as we commemorate 38 years of Medicare, it is under siege again. As people across America pursue state and national lawmakers to reduce prescription drug costs and make medications affordable for more people, the drug industry is fighting back every inch of the way.

"I believe that the amount of money they spend and the number of people they hire (to lobby) is really a problem in a democracy," says Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine.

Currently, the Medicare bill before Congress is in trouble. One provision of the House bill has almost no support among Democrats. It would set up direct competition between the traditional Medicare program and private health plans by 2010. If the traditional program cost more than the private plans, elderly beneficiaries would have to pay higher premiums to reflect the extra cost.

Conservative House Republicans strongly support such competition, saying it could help save money in the long run. President Bush favors a larger role for private health plans.

But his framework for Medicare legislation, issued in March, did not call for such direct competition, which many Democrats denounce as a risky attempt to privatize Medicare.

Even with the $58 deducted from the monthly Social Security allotment, many recipients still do not have healthcare.

To come together to commemorate Medicare on this July day is not about "the then" and "the there."

It is about "the now" and "the tomorrows."