Signing of the Medicare and Medicaid Act of 1965 | July 30, 2025
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
President Harry S. Truman Attends the Signing of the Medicare and Medicaid Act of 1965
July 30, 1965
“THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD ARE OF ONE MIND IN THEIR DETERMINATION TO SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS BY WORKING TOGETHER.”
TODAY marks the 60th anniversary of the signing of Medicare and Medicaid—a key milestone in American life and public health. President Johnson signed this critical legislation at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, with President and Mrs. Truman at his side. It was a nod to Truman’s tireless advocacy to improve the health of all Americans. Although unsuccessful during his presidency, Truman created the blueprint for the passage of the Medicare & Medicaid Act of 1965.
“I am so proud that this has come to pass in the Johnson administration. But it was really Harry Truman of Missouri who planted the seeds of compassion and duty which have today flowered into care for the sick, and serenity for the fearful.”
– President Lyndon B. Johnson
Follow President Lyndon B. Johnson on his historic visit to the Truman Library in photographs, courtesy of the LBJ Presidential Library and Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum.
Keep scrolling; there’s more to explore.
HOW WE GOT HERE
Truman’s FIGHT FOR HEALTH CARE
TWENTY YEARS EARLIER, Harry Truman made history as the first U.S. president to propose a comprehensive national health insurance plan to Congress. Goals included addressing health care professional shortages, expanding public health services, increasing medical research funding, lowering individual medical costs, and providing income replacement for severe illness. This plan, known as the National Health Act of 1945 was the opening act of Truman’s seven-year quest to deliver better health to the American people.
In his 1945 address to Congress, he argued: “Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. The time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and that protection.”
He would make the case again … and again, and again. Click below for his most rousing calls for national health care.
TRUMAN ON NATIONAL HEALTH CARE
“I have had some bitter disappointments as President, but the one that has troubled me most, in a personal way, has been the failure to defeat the organized opposition to a national … health-insurance program.”
– President Harry S. Truman
Wait, WHAT?
HOW DID TRUMAN LOSE? Truman. The bookish four-eyed farmer who cheated an eye exam for the right to fight in WWI. The cow-town senator who landed on the cover of TIME for exposing fraud in WWII defense contracts. The underdog who did, in fact, defeat Dewey … and then used his presidential power to end Jim Crow in the U.S. Armed Forces, despite an unwilling Congress and uncertain public.
Next to that list, health care should have been a cakewalk. After all, Americans were on his side. According to a Gallup poll in November 1945, shortly after Truman unveiled his plan, 59 percent of Americans “approved of Truman’s plan for health insurance in this country.” Only one in four opposed it.
So how did President Truman lose a campaign that had such broad support?
Frequently cited reasons include competing domestic priorities, a midterm election that gave Republicans a congressional majority, the Korean War, and a historic fight by America’s most powerful lobby at the time—the American Medical Association, or the AMA.
All true. But to answer the question of why Truman failed, you really need only two words, and we found them buried in an oral history on the Truman Library’s website: Whitaker & Baxter.
Meet OSCAR EWING
THE AMA’S FIERCE CAMPAIGN against Truman’s health care plan is well documented, but it hadn’t occurred to us that it wasn’t an “inside” job until stumbling across the Truman Library’s oral history with Oscar Ewing (right). A key policy adviser to Truman, it was Ewing’s job to make health care happen. This excerpt from his interview sheds light on why it didn’t:
In 1948, a reporter “friend of mine, Mike Gorman … received a telephone call from Clem Whitaker in San Francisco. Clem told him that the firm of Whitaker & Baxter had just been employed by the American Medical Association to conduct a hard-hitting fight against national health insurance and he would like Mike to join his staff and help in the fight. Mike replied, “Clem, I’m not sure. I don’t think you can beat it. I’m convinced that it’s the right thing to do and such a program will eventually be adopted and you can’t stop it.”
“Oh,” Whitaker said, “that’s easy. … There are only two things that you have to have. First you have to give the program a bad name and we’re going to call it ‘socialized medicine’ . . . Then the second thing you have to have is a devil [and] paint him in all his horns and we’ve got that man chosen. We first thought we would center the attack on President Truman, but we’ve decided he is too popular; but we’ve got a perfect devil in this man Ewing and we’re going to give him the works.”
“First, you have to give the program a bad name and we’re going to call it socialized medicine.”
– Clem Whitaker, Whitaker & Baxter
The AMA’S EDGE: WHITAKER & BAXTER
CLEM WHITAKER & LEONE BAXTER were a husband-and-wife team who founded the world’s first political consulting firm, Campaigns, Inc. And they were winning.
In December 1948, the AMA decided to assess its 140,000 members $25 annually to retain Whitaker and Baxter to direct a “national education drive.” It would be their first national campaign, and it would change American politics forever.
It’s been said that Whitaker and Baxter weren’t just deploying new tactics but rather writing the playbook. See if you recognize any of the duo’s precepts, as highlighted by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker (September 17, 2012):
“Fan flames. ‘We need more partisanship in this country,’ Whitaker said. Never shy from controversy; instead, win the controversy. ‘The average American doesn’t want to be educated; he doesn’t want to improve his mind; he doesn’t even want to work, consciously, at being a good citizen,’ Whitaker advised. ‘But there are two ways you can interest him in a campaign, and only two that we have ever found successful.’ You can put on a fight (‘he likes a good hot battle, with no punches pulled’), or you can put on a show (‘he likes the movies; he likes mysteries; he likes fireworks and parades’): ‘So if you can’t fight, PUT ON A SHOW! And if you put on a good show, Mr. and Mrs. America will turn out to see it.’”
Whitaker & Baxter spent almost $5,000,000 ($70 million in today’s dollars) over three years. In 1950 alone, they generated more than 40 different publications and distributed more than 43,000,000 pieces of campaign material at local events, fairs and conferences. Physicians were enlisted to call their elected representatives; doctors were given handouts for every patient; radio scripts were drafted, as were comic strips, entire news stories and at least one dramatic script.
Demonizing Truman’s plan as “socialized medicine” worked. By October 1950, support for Truman’s national health insurance program had fallen from 59 percent to 24 percent, according to Gallup.
“If you can’t fight, PUT ON A SHOW! And if you put on a good show, Mr. and Mrs. America will turn out to see it.”
– Clem Whitaker, Whitaker & Baxter
Vintage TRUMAN—THE TUROFF LETTER
NO ONE, IT TURNED OUT, WAS ON THE SIDELINES, and that was by design. “Make it personal” was a Whitaker & Baxter motto. As a result, the White House was flooded with mail from physicians (supporting and opposing), students studying the issue, concerned citizens and personal friends.
Most received pat replies drafted by members of the administration, but we found one instance of a very personal reply: Harry Truman’s letter to Ben Turoff of Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Sam Rushay, supervisory archivist at the Truman Library, calls it “vintage Truman.” And now, thanks to Archivist Tammy Williams, the exchange is digitized and available online. Click below to view these featured documents.
“Nobody is working for socialized medicine—all my Health Program calls for is an insurance plan that will enable people to pay doctor bills and receive hospital treatment when they need it.”
– President Harry S. Truman
The FIRESIDE CHAT THAT WASN’T
TRUMAN WAS URGED numerous times to take his case directly to the American people via a fireside chat. It never happened. But in his memoirs, Years of Trial and Hope, 1946-1952, he finally had his say:
I have never been able to understand all the fuss some people make about government wanting to do something to improve and protect the health of the people. I usually find that those who are loudest in protesting against medical help by the federal government are those who do not need help. But the fact is that a large portion of our population cannot afford to pay for proper medical and hospital care. …
I have had some stormy times as President and have engaged in some vigorous controversies. Democracy thrives on debate and political differences. But I had no patience with the reactionary selfish people and politicians who fought year after year every proposal we made to improve the people’s health. I have had some bitter disappointments as President, but the one that has troubled me most, in a personal way, has been the failure to defeat the organized opposition to a national compulsory health-insurance program.
“I usually find that those who are loudest in protesting against medical help by the federal government are those who do not need the help.”
– President Harry S. Truman
Epilogue: THE “LOST” REPORT
TRY SAYING “NO” TO A MISSOURI MULE. President Truman’s health care program may have died in committee, but he never gave up the fight. On December 29, 1951, he established a bipartisan health commission by executive order, set that committee to work examining the “health needs of the nation,” and left us a largely forgotten landmark report so sweeping and visionary that a 2022 Journal of Internal Medicine editorial by Laura Kolbe and Joseph J. Fins declared it a “bioethical milestone of the 20th century” that is “ripe for reevaluation.”
Chaired by Paul M. Magnuson, the commission’s report, Building America’s Health, was printed in five volumes and presented to the president on December 18, 1952. Then, on January 9, 1953, President Truman formally transmitted the first volume to Congress, saying:
The members of the President’s Commission on the Health Needs of the Nation, through their conscientious and tireless efforts over the past twelve months, have pointed the way to a fresh and constructive approach in meeting our problems in the all-important health field. It is my earnest hope that the Congress will give immediate consideration to the findings and recommendations of this Commission and thus continue our efforts to protect and improve the health of all the people of this Nation.
Truman’s remarks came just 11 days before Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated. Harry and Bess returned to their home in Independence, Missouri, where—20 years later—President Lyndon B. Johnson would sign into law a national health insurance program called “Medicare.”
HISTORIC AUDIO FROM 12/18/1952
TRUMAN’S MESSAGE TO CONGRESS (1/9/1953)
“At a time when we are devoting our energies to strengthening our country … we can ill afford to neglect the essential needs of our people in the protection and improvement of their health.”
– President Harry S. Truman (January 9, 1953)
Join our email list to receive Truman updates right in your inbox: