NYT Op Ed: Waiting for Another L.B.J.

[pacalo]

(...)

Medicare was born in strife. The legislation emerged from a titanic struggle that raged across the American political landscape starting in 1949, when Harry Truman first proposed national health insurance.

Conservatives saw Medicare as a potentially mortal intrusion of government on the American way of life. "We will awake to find that we have socialism," Ronald Reagan warned in 1962. The American Medical Association, one of the most feared lobbies of that time, tenaciously opposed Medicare. For their part, liberals saw Medicare as the first step toward long overdue federal health care coverage for all Americans.

(...)

Medicare's history suggests that tough problems in health care can be solved, but only after long struggle, and only with visionary and effective leadership from the highest reaches of our political system. Johnson pulled out all the stops for Medicare. He told Vice President Hubert Humphrey on March 6, 1965: "I'll go a hundred million or a billon on health or education. I don't argue about that any more than I argue about Lady Bird buying flour." He added: "I may cut back some tanks. But not on health."

One measure of Johnson's achievement is surely that Republicans, who have gone from reviling Medicare to enacting its costly new drug benefit, have accepted the program as part of America's social safety net and political firmament. But Medicare's mixed history also suggests that, in health care at least, no solution is ever final. Preserving its benefits, and fixing our failing health care system, will require strong support from the American public and a president as committed and politically agile as Lyndon Baines Johnson. It would be tragic if we had to wait four more decades for this rare combination to emerge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/30/opinion/30blumenthal.html?th&emc=th

THANK A DEMOCRAT...If you get Social Security or you’re looking forward to it.
THANK A DEMOCRAT...If you’ve ever had to draw unemployment.
THANK A DEMOCRAT...For Medicare, Medicaid
THANK A DEMOCRAT...For college student loans
THANK A DEMOCRAT...For national parks
THANK A DEMOCRAT...For minimum wage laws
THANK A DEMOCRAT...For overtime pay
THANK A DEMOCRAT...For school lunch programs
THANK A DEMOCRAT...For Headstart
THANK A DEMOCRAT...For environmental safeguards

http://stokesdemocrats.com/_wsn/page4.html

[jurassicpork]

1. I thought that national parks

were started by the Republican President Teddy Roosevelt?

JP
http://jurassicpork.blogspot.com

[pacalo]

2. Yes, through his creation of the U.S. Forestry Service

although Yellowstone, the first national park, was created in 1872 during Grant's administration.

The question is, have the Republicans, particularly the current administration, done a good job of preserving them?

[jurassicpork]

3. I think we all know the answer to that...

...because during Republican administrations, the Interior Secretary is more redundant than a chair on the Jerry Springer set.

JP
http://jurassicpork.blogspot.com