“[Medicare] will take its place beside Social Security and together they will form the twin pillars of protection upon which all our people can safely build their lives and their hopes.”

—Lyndon Johnson

No exploration of the nation’s health care system is complete without a discussion of Medicare and the principles of government-sponsored health care it represents. The concept of national health insurance for Americans was formulated almost a century ago. It was mentioned in a speech given by Louis D. Brandeis (who later became a Supreme Court justice) in 1911. It was part of former president Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party platform in 1912, and it was the primary agenda of the First American Conference on Social Insurance held in Chicago in 1913. Further, formal debate began in the Senate on a “standard” (universal) health insurance bill in 1915. The legislative wrangling lasted...