Of The Last Century
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of the Last Century
There has been a lot of perceived controversy surrounding the Affordable Care Act lately. The concerns are based on the law being pushed through to fast, that the act was too overreaching or that their was no way to pay for so much coverage. The act has been a major issue surrounding the 2016 presidential election, along with both cycles which led to Obama’s two term presidency. The public has been stunned by how different the parties are split on this act, and that it has landed on the desk of the supreme court, and faces promises of its overturn by members of both primary parties. The truth is though, that even in the last 100 years, this fight, even for the very same idea of Universal Healthcare is not new. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt, ending with the Universal system we have now. Even after this, laws were enacted that helped build up to the current debate we are having today. The groundwork for Universal Healthcare in the United States has been laid for the past century through many acts, including the Social Security Act of 1935, Kerr-Mills Act of 1960, COBRA of 1986 and HIPAA of 1996, just to name four.
The Social Security Act enacted under Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency remains perhaps the most powerful healthcare reform Act, second only to the Affordable Care Act, assuming the ACA can be adjusted enough to be accepted by the whole country. According to U-S-History.com (2013), the law came with the devastation of the Great Depression, and was one of the programs promised by Roosevelt’s New Deal Programs. The law itself was born out of temporary laws put in place during and after the Civil War, when America experienced more death than at any other time in its history. Disabled veterans had no way to work, and needed money to take care of their families, the act passed back then helped to mitigate living costs by a fund set up by the government for several groups of people who could not work. The Social Security Act went much further, to affect veterans, the elderly, disabled, and anybody who could no longer pay for themselves. People were living longer, making this even more necessary.
Skipping ahead 25 years, the government passed the Kerr-Mills Act of 1960. This moved us closer to the ACA, as it expressly added a medical component to build upon the Social Security Act. This act signalled the beginning of Medicare, primary to help the aged and interned according to Julian Zelizer in 2015. To add an interesting note. This law was introduced by Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, and much like today, it took many years for all states to accept this law; at the time only 22 states were in compliance.
In 1986, and under another Republican president, COBRA was passed. This decidedly non-conservative act provided a way for employees to keep their employer sanctioned health care programs for up to 18 months after they lost their jobs. This bill ensures that families and people who are now jobless can be provided with necessary health coverage as they search for a new career.
Finally, HIPAA was passed in 1996. Passed under Bill Clinton, this was and is a bill that actually has far reaching bipartisan support (United States Department of Labor, n.d.). These laws, created somewhat out of what the government thought that computers would be able to do in the future, was a series of laws that affirmed the privacy laws for anybody seeking medial treatment. If a person is an adult who is not in prison, not a single person outside of the patient and their providers are told anything without signed permission first.
If the past is any indication, whether the Affordable Care Act continues to go virtually untouched, or if it is passed piecemeal, like all these other acts, it will eventually be passed either way. It will probably be changed a lot by people who don’t agree with the entire law, and perhaps have reason to think so, but sometimes changes, almost always actually, bills go through a lot of change before they reach a point of becoming widely accepted American law.
References
United States Department of Health. (n.d.). Continuation of Health Coverage — COBRA
United States Department of Health. retrieved from http://www.dol.gov/
general/topic/health-plans/cobra.
U-S-History. (2013). The Social Security Act. U-S-history.com retrieved from
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1609.html.
Zelizer, J.(2015). How Medicare Was Made. The New Yorker web portal. retrieved from
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/medicare-made.
