[Jim W N]

Ronald Reagan warned it would lead to socialized medicine.

Critics of the 1965 legislation warned that both [Medicare and Medicaid] programs would spend much more than supporters predicted, that price controls and rationing of care would follow and that the quality of care would eventually suffer. All of the warnings have proved correct.

In 1965, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare Part A, which covers hospital bills, would cost $9 billion a year by 1990. But the actual cost after the first 25 years was $67 billion, and that didn't include Medicare Part B, which primarily covers outpatient costs.

As health economist Theodore Marmor pointed out: "Hospital price increases presented the most intractable political problem for the Johnson administration. In the first year of Medicare's operation, the average daily service charge in America's hospitals increased by an unprecedented 21.9%. Each month the Labor Department's consumer price survey reported further increases . ... In the State of the Union Address, Jan. 17, 1968, Johnson ... promised to 'stem the rising costs of medical care.'"

It appears the GOP hasn't learned much from this either since most want to replace Obamacare with more government intervention into healthcare and very few call for no government interference, letting instead the market economy run healthcare which it did successfully for almost 200 years creating the highest quality, most available healthcare in world at minimum cost.

Repeat out loud, over and over again, to as many people as you can: when it comes to healthcare, the economy, and everything else the feds have no constitutional business meddling with...

"GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE SOLUTION, GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM."

Get the feds out of healthcare (socialized medicine is a disaster) and out of the economy where they don't constitutionally belong.

[GeronL]

Leftists will never admit its a failed program as long as its giving “free stuff” to people

[Robert A Cook PE]

So, when will Social Security go broke?

When will Medicaid go broke - now that Obola is shredding it for his Obomacare subsidies and failures?

[Bobibutu]

I recall the LBJ speech. I was 23 and thought it was BS then. Still do, only now we no longer have to speculate.

[kabar]

Perhaps next time, we might try market forces rather than another failed effort at centralized government programs.

Next time it will be single payer. It is inevitable.

[EternalVigilance]

Every “major” Republican running for President supports the continuation and protection of the unconstitutional centerpiece programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Same goes for the Republican members of Congress.

In other words, the blame doesn’t just belong to the Democrats.

[T-Bird45]

I’ve posted this opinion/recollection here before but your bolded comment on the article reminded me of the hospital/doctor scuttlebutt my mom talked about in that mid-60s time period. She was a surgical nurse for an ophthalmologist. The doctors were universally aligned with Ronald Reagan and the critics as regards socialized medicine and costs. This has become an axiom about that which you subsidize you get more of it. This has now transferred to college costs via the student loan program yet politicians still are enamored of the “free stuff” solution rather than the market.

[smokingfrog]

The Uninsured.

After a decade of full implementation, the CBO estimates that 31 million people will be without insurance in 2025.[17] The ACA requires Americans to purchase government-approved health coverage or pay an individual mandate penalty. Although the majority of uninsured will qualify for an exemption, millions will not. In fact, the CBO expects that in 2016, 4 million individuals will face the mandate penalty, totaling $4 billion.[18] Of those facing the penalty, 69 percent are expected to be below 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

[adorno]

In short, it appears the Democrats who passed this massive and convoluted ObamaCare system learned nothing from 50 years of Medicare and Medicaid.

It appears that, it is we republicans who have learned nothing form the past 50 years.

Look, you dimwitted republicans, democrats don't care about blowing the budgets, and they don't care that a program could or will go bankrupt. The democrats' goal is to convert the whole economy into socialism. Socialism is what gets them into power and keeps them there. People like 'free' stuff, and Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and Obamacare, are just a few of the means towards converting the whole economy into socialism.

Forget about whether democrats want to be fiscally responsible with spending. They don't care. They are the party of 'doing whatever it takes', which would include sending the country into recession or a depression. Recessions and depressions, tend to send people into government dependence, when people go begging for protection from going hungry and homeless and clothes-less. Democrats thrive most when people are suffering, and they'll do their utmost to make sure people get into needy situations.

Let's get smart, you dummies!

[hinckley buzzard]

These rants are interesting but the real danger of Medicare is not that it is a "failure." The real danger is that to the overwhelming perception of the public, Medicare is a success and has become a building block of American life.

To attack medicare now is like Goldwater advocating to privatize TVA in 1964. It was a good enough idea, but a large stationary target for the demagogues. Likewise Medicare, which takes care of almost everyone's grandparents, most of our parents, and many of us.

Remember grandma in a wheel chair being pushed off a cliff? That is the image you need to counter, and you won't do it by offering some erudite sharp pencil accounting and abstract treatise on limited government.

Find and promulgate a good alternative-- please--but don't think for a nanosecond that any politician up for election will want to dump Medicare.