Then & Now: Medicare and Medicaid turn 50
WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law on July 30, 1965, roughly half of Americans 65 and older had no health insurance.
"No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine," Johnson said at the bill signing. "No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years. No longer will young families see their own incomes, and their own hopes, eaten away simply because they are carrying out their deep moral obligations to their parents, and to their uncles, and their aunts.