LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Nancy Pelosi :: @SpeakerPelosi 61 years ago, President Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law—providing millions of vulnerable Americans with a pillar of health and economic security.  He did so in Independence, Missouri, alongside President Truman, who championed the initiative during his time in office.   As Republicans gut these vital lifelines to give more tax cuts to the rich, our fight to protect the care that millions of Americans rely on has never been more important. LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN July 30, 2026 Heather Cox Richardson Jul 31, 2026 Sixty years ago today, on July 30, 1966, Medicare and Medicaid went into effect. A year earlier, President Lyndon B. Johnson had signed the Medicare and Medicaid amendments Congress had made to the Social Security Act of 1935, establishing two national health insurance programs. Medicare used federal funds to cover seniors, while Medicaid covered people who qualified on the basis of income using federal and state funding. The programs expanded health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans. Americans and their leaders had called for government support for healthcare since the early 1900s, but the final push to expand healthcare coverage in the United States came out of the New Deal. In 1945, President Harry Truman continued to expand the social safety net anchored by the 1935 Social Security Act signed into law by his predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. On November 19, 1945, Truman reminded Congress that in September he had proposed an Economic Bill of Rights that guaranteed “certain rights which ought to be assured to every American citizen.” “One of them,” he reminded them, “was: ‘The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.’ Another was the ‘right to adequate protection from the economic fears of…sickness....’” “Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health,” he said. “Millions do not now ha…