On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill that created Medicare and Medicaid as an amendment to the Social Security Act of 1935. Medicare provided hospital and medical insurance for Americans who were sixty-five and over. The first beneficiary and recipient of a Medicare card was former president Harry Truman. When the law took effect in 1966, it was immediately successful. About nineteen million people signed up for Medicare right away. Until this time, most American senior citizens were without health insurance. Medicare kept many of these people out of poverty and helped them to be able to afford their medical expenses. At the same time, Medicaid made medical care available to certain qualified low-income people.
In 1972, the Medicare program was expanded to include people with certain disabilities who were under sixty-five and people with kidney diseases who needed dialysis or kidney transplants. In 2003, optional drug coverage was added to the Medicare program.
Medicare and Medicaid are still relevant today because they provide health insurance for people who would not otherwise be able to afford it. As mentioned above, the initial enrollment for Medicare was nineteen million. As of February 2019, just over sixty million people were enrolled in the Medicare program, including over fifty-two million seniors and almost eight million younger people with disabilities. As of January 2019, Medicaid and its associated Children's Health Insurance Programs, or CHIP, provide health insurance for almost seventy-three million people.
Medicare and Medicaid have been relevant from their inceptions and continue to be relevant because of the many millions of Americans these programs have provided with medical care. Without these programs, poor Americans, which include many seniors, disabled people, and children, would be unable to afford medical treatment.
https://www.cms.gov/About-CMS/Agency-Information/History/index
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/johnson-signs-medicare-into-law
https://www.ssa.gov/history/corning.html
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