Johnson signed the bill, he did so alongside an elder Harry Truman -- who, two decades before that, had become the first sitting president to pursue universal health care seriously. On November 19, 1945, only 7 months into his presidency, Harry S. Truman sent a Presidential message to the United States Congress proposing a new national health care program
Medicare, Johnson promised, would help realize Truman’s dream for the nation’s elderly: “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine,” Johnson said. “No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years.”
After 50 years medicare still has it's naysayers, 2016 Presidential candidate Jeb Bush said in a speech "It's an actuarially unsound system," the former Florida governor replied. "The people that are receiving these benefits, I don’t think that we should touch that," Bush went on to say. "We need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something, because they're not going to have anything."
