Foreword
In July 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the act establishing the Medicare program, he presented the first Medicare card to former President Harry Truman, saying "No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine." Truman had proposed such a health care program for the elderly in the 1940s, and President Kennedy had taken up the cause in the early 1960s. The 1965 legislation passed after it became clear that private insurers could not provide comprehensive, affordable health coverage to a rapidly growing population of senior citizens whose incomes were being outpaced by the…
