The History Of Medicare, United States Healthcare Scheme, From Hope To Financial Insolvency

US Medicare is a social insurance program which provides health insurance coverage for people aged 65 and over, and for those who meet certain other special criteria. Medicare (US) is a single-payer health care system, similar to systems in other countries, such as Canada, Australia and the UK, except that US Medicare only covers a part of the total population. This short article reviews the history of Medicare in the United States, and examines the challenges which the program faces due to demographic changes and spiraling costs of medical treatment.

In a single-payer health care system there is one large insurance fund which pays the health costs of the entire population, or a large group of the population, such as people over 65 years of age. In these systems, an organization, the Federal government in the case of US Medicare, collects the insurance payments through taxes, and uses the fund to provide a universal health care service.

In the United States in 1961 the former commissioner of Social Security, Robert M. Ball, examined the problem of funding health insurance for senior citizens. He concluded that the major issue was that the elderly often required expensive medical treatment because of their age, but were not able to pay health insurance costs because they were no longer working, and they relied on a pension for income.

Ball therefore said that the only way in which health care could be funded for the elderly was to use the same mechanism which is used to fund retirement pensions. Payments should be collected from those who were in work, and able to pay, and the benefits should be provided after retirement.

Medicare supporters then can argue that Medicare is not like an unearned entitlement, but rather a form of social insurance. The people who are benefiting from the scheme today, are those who paid into the scheme when they were working. It is true that some people end up paying more in than they get out, but that is also true of any other insurance scheme.

Many conservatives including Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Barry Goldwater and Bob Dole opposed the creation of Medicare, often arguing that it would lead to the creation of socialism in America, or would lead to a decrease in individual responsibility.

Nonetheless Medicare passed into law in 1965. At the ceremony President Lyndon B Johnson enrolled the first two Medicare beneficiaries. They were former President Harry Truman and Mrs. Truman.

In the present day Medicare is facing a severe financial crisis, which arises from two fundamental causes. Firstly there is a demographic shift towards an older population. Ironically this has been caused by medical advances which mean that people now live much longer. Those who are under 65, in work, and paying taxes, now find that they have to support an increasing number of over 65s benefiting from the Medicare scheme.

Secondly, medical costs have rapidly increased in the last 40 years. Many expensive, new treatments are not available, which were not known about when the scheme was set up.

Those responsible for the fund have predicted that if present trends continue the health insurance fund will become insolvent in 2019. One can therefore expect that in the next decade the U. S. Federal government will see fixing this Medicare crisis as one of its top domestic priorities.

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