On 50th anniversary of Medicare, Sanders proposes Medicare-for-all

Johnson signed an amendment to the Social Security Act creating Medicare and Medicaid programs. Jani Actman reports from Washington, D.C.

“They were empty because seniors all of a sudden had someone who would pay for long-term care that wasn’t there before”, says Lee, Jr.

Today, in 2015, there are more than 52 million Americans on Medicare and 31 million low-income Americans are covered by Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP.

Under today’s health care system in the United States, thousands of people die each year because they delay seeking care they can not afford.

The date Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, a little more than a year before Medicare.

“One of the traditional methods of imposing state-ism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine”, Reagan says in the ad. And now, one in three Americans has Medicare or Medicaid coverage.

Sanders’ presidential campaign page does not list universal health care yet.

Through the program is federally administered, it now works through 30 private health insurance companies across the US.

“The reason it’s most efficient”, explains Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor at the CUNY School of Public Health and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, “is because you are able to save hundreds of billions of dollars annually by eliminating the bureaucracy and administrative costs associated with private health insurance”.

“As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Medicare, it is important that we defend this enormously important program rather than talk about ending it,” Sanders said in a statement. And some critics argue it won’t lead to cost savings but will mean higher taxes. His father, the elder Peter Lee, says the passage of Medicare changed the game. “Then Medicare was passed and then the halls were all empty”. Introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2013, the legislation would establish a single-payer health insurance system. Their father inspired them and they, in turn, have inspired the next generation.