| Medicare |
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| Health Care |
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On July 30th 1965 Lyndon B Johnson signed in Social Security legislation that ammended the system to graft in a program called “Medicare”. He at that time enrolled Harry S Truman as the first Medicare recipient by presesnting him with his first medicare card. People would tend to think that this was a larg step for government to start helping the people and provide for those who desperately needed the help. What they did not see is that this form of socialized medicine would open the doors to one of the problems that we have with our governments health care today. According to the pew research center %62 percent of the american public believes that reforming our healthcare system should be a priority when it comes to public policy. Unfortunately we haven't been able make the significant changes that need to be made and I believe in order to better undertand how to fix the problem that we are currently in we need to take a look at some of the basic facts and figues that will help us realize some of the drastic changes that need to take place. In 1965 when the medicare program began the average person that would be receiving this public helath care would be over the age of 65, with a few exceptions. The thing that we need to realize is that the average life expectancy at the time was 65! In 2007 the CIA world factbook estimated that the average life expectancy in the united states was 77-80. These numbers make it pretty easy to see what kind of policy would need to be implemented to take this program back to what is was originally meant for. In 1965 there were 24 working americans for every medicare dependent, Today there are 3 working americans for every medicare dependent. The system is not going to be able to support itself at this rate. In 2007 440 Billion dollars was spent on Medicare, which is %16 percent of the entire federal budget. These are key figures and numbers which we need to be aware of when making basic decisions on how to affectively bring about positive change in our Healthcare system. Luke Macias |
