Medicare

When Medicare was enacted in 1965 as the health care linchpin of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, its architects considered this insurance program for the elderly only an interim step toward the broader goal of universal health care coverage.1 That goal has never been achieved, although Medicare is the nation's single largest source of payment for medical care, insuring 39 million beneficiaries against the financial consequences of acute illness. Since Congress established the program, the benefits covered by Medicare have remained largely unchanged, with the exception of a few added preventive services, and they are certainly inadequate by current medical . . .