Kaiser Health News
August 9, 2016
1965: The Year That Brought Civil Rights To The Nation's Hospitals
By Michelle Andrews
In his new book, David Barton Smith takes us back to the mid-1960s, when a small band of civil rights activists-cum-government bureaucrats toiled to get the nascent Medicare program up and running. In the process, they profoundly changed the way health care is delivered in this country.
It stands in marked contrast to the political turmoil over health care of recent years.
"In four months they transformed the nation's hospitals from our most racially and economically segregated institutions to our most integrated," Smith writes in "The Power to Heal: Civil Rights, Medicare, and the Struggle to Transform America's Health Care System."
"In four years they changed patterns of use of health services that had persisted for half a century. The fundamental moral imperative — that those needing medical care should receive it — began for the first time to reflect actual use of services. A profound transformation, now taken for granted, happened almost overnight."
Michelle Andrews: Over the course of several months, a small group of government workers implemented the Medicare program. From the start, they said that hospitals that discriminated couldn't participate. How did they manage it?
David Barton Smith: Wilbur Cohen and the people in the Social Security Administration were absolutely masterful in pulling this together in such a short period of time. They knew exactly how to get things done and they paid attention to the details. It's remarkable that without the computers that we have today or the Internet, they were able to do this all in 11 months. They were just good professionals.
Michelle Andrews: There has been talk at various times about creating "Medicare for All." Given what you know, what are the odds of that ever happening here?
David Barton Smith: The odds are better now than a few years ago. Because of the ACA, but also because people are beginning to understand some of the limitations of a privately insured system. It's more complicated, it's more costly, it's harder to get good competitive pricing from hospitals or from drug companies. And this idea is something that's been resisted by the insurance industry. But I get the sense that people are getting a little bit more impatient. Although a lot of Republicans bash Obamacare, I don't hear a lot of them bashing Medicare. The resistance would be strong, certainly. This is a very interesting year.
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Comment by Don McCanne
The story of using Medicare to rapidly integrate our nation's hospitals is inspiring. It should give us hope that an Improved Medicare for All could be used to leverage corrections of other health care injustices.
David Barton Smith reminds us that people are beginning to understand some of the limitations of a privately insured system and that they are becoming more impatient. Let's leverage that.
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