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Brain -> Same healthcare arguments, just decades earlier (3/28/2010 8:28:28 PM)
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The first proposal for universal health care was made by Teddy Roosevelt (of the GOP). To see how far to the extreme right the GOP is now just remember Nixon also proposed universal health care for Americans.
Same healthcare arguments, just decades earlier
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-na-ticket28-2010mar28,0,2877908.story
President Harry S. Truman is considered the grandfather of universal healthcare, having first proposed it in 1945. "The health of American children, like their education, should be recognized as a definite public responsibility," he said.
Twenty years later, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare Act into law, he invited Truman, then 81 years old, to be at his side. Then LBJ enrolled Truman as the first beneficiary of the new program that provided healthcare for the 65-and-older set, calling him "the real daddy of Medicare."
But Medicare, much like President Obama's healthcare reform legislation, did not become law without a political fight. In fact, the American Medical Assn. mobilized a massive campaign against the idea, working tirelessly to stop the reform in Congress.
And to serve as the public face of its campaign against a government-sponsored health plan, the AMA chose none other than Ronald Reagan, the star of "General Electric Theater" and former president of the Screen Actors Guild whose views on politics matched its own.
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