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AS MEDICARE TURNS 59, WE STILL MUST DEFEND IT  
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Max Richtman
July 30, 2024
Common Dreams [[link removed]]


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_ Even after nearly six decades of Medicare’s overall success, we
must continually protect it from conservatives’ attempts to cut and
privatize the program. _

President Johnson signs the Medicare program into law on July 30,
1965., SSA

 

Before Medicare was signed into law
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59 years ago today, nearly half of American seniors had no hospital
insurance
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Private insurance companies were reluctant to cover anyone over 65.
Even fewer seniors had coverage for non-hospital services like
doctor’s visits. Many of the elderly were forced to exhaust their
retirement savings to pay for medical care; some fell into poverty
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of it. All of that changed with Medicare.

In Medicare’s first year of coverage, poverty decreased by 66% among
the senior population. From 1965, when Medicare was enacted, to 1994,
life expectancy at age 65 increased nearly three full years
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This was no coincidence. Access to Medicare coverage for those who
were previously uninsured helped lift seniors out of poverty and
extend their lives.

As with Social Security, workers would contribute with each paycheck
toward their future Medicare benefits. Upon putting his signature on
this new program, a keystone of the Great Society, President Johnson
declared, “Every citizen will be able, in their productive years
when they are earning, to insure themselves against the ravages of
illness in old age.”

Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a second Trump presidency,
would gut traditional Medicare by accelerating privatization and
repealing drug price negotiation.

Medicare has been improved several times over the decades. In 1972,
Americans with disabilities (under 65 years of age) became eligible
for Medicare coverage—along with people suffering from chronic
kidney disease needing dialysis or transplants. In 2003, prescription
drug coverage was added to Medicare (though the program was prohibited
from negotiating prices with drugmakers). The Inflation Reduction Act
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of 2022 finally empowered Medicare to negotiate prices with Big
Pharma—and lowered seniors’ costs by capping their out-of-pocket
expenses for prescription drugs and insulin.

Nearly 60 years after it was enacted, Medicare is one of the most
popular and efficient federal programs. Ninety-four percent
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of beneficiaries say they are “satisfied” or “very satisfied”
with their quality of care. Unlike many other federal programs,
Medicare spends less than 2%
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of its budget on administrative costs.

Medicare isn’t perfect. It should be expanded to cover dental,
hearing, and vision
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care. More urgently, though, the privatized version of the program,
Medicare Advantage
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gobbling up a larger share of the program despite myriad problems
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including MA insurers overbilling the government and denying care
that’s always offered by traditional Medicare. The Biden-Harris
administration has been working to hold those private plans more
accountable
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but much remains to be done to protect traditional Medicare from
efforts toward privatization.

Even after 59 years of Medicare’s overall success, we must
continually defend Medicare against conservatives’ attempts to cut
and privatize the program. Our founder, Rep. James Roosevelt, Sr
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of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, knew that Medicare (along with
Social Security) would need continuous advocacy to withstand assaults
from antagonistic political forces. That’s why the word
“preserve” is in our organization’s name
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Many conservatives opposed
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Medicare from the start, labeling it “socialism” and “socialized
medicine.” In 1962, Ronald Reagan
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warned that if Medicare were to be enacted, “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.”

Today, the onslaught continues. The House Republican Study
Committee’s (RSC) 2025 budget proposes to cut Medicare by an
estimated $1 trillion over the next decade. The RSC would replace
Medicare’s current system with vouchers, and push seniors into
private plans that can and do deny coverage. Project 2025
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blueprint for a second Trump presidency, would gut traditional
Medicare by accelerating privatization and repealing drug price
negotiation.

Democrats by and large support protecting and even expanding Medicare.
President Joe Biden tried to add dental, vision, and hearing coverage
in his Build Back Better Act, but encountered resistance from
Republicans and centrist Democrats. It’s still a laudable goal.

Republicans, for the most part, advocate cutting Medicare benefits and
privatization. We endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris
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for president, because she knows the importance of Medicare to
America’s seniors and people with disabilities—and has vowed to
protect them. Former President Donald Trump
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has been rhetorically all over the map on this topic, telling _CNBC_
he is “open” to “cutting entitlements”
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but claiming to support Medicare. (His budgets as president called for
billions of dollars in Medicare cuts
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The 59th anniversary of Medicare is both an occasion for celebrating
the program’s enormous successes over the past six decades—and a
time to defend Medicare in the marbled halls of Washington, D.C., and
at the ballot box this November.

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Max Richtman is president and CEO of the National Committee to
Preserve Social Security and Medicare. He is former staff director at
the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging.

* Medicare Anniversary; Medicare and Privatization; Republican
Attacks on Medicare;
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