Medicaid in the United States is a federal and state program that helps with medical costs for some people with limited income and resources. Medicaid also offers benefits not normally covered by Medicare, including nursing home care and personal care services. The Health Insurance Association of America describes Medicaid as "a government insurance program for persons of all ages whose income and resources are insufficient to pay for health care." Medicaid is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for people with low income in the United States, providing free health insurance to 74 million low-income and disabled people as of 2017. It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the state and federal governments and managed by the states, with each state currently having broad leeway to determine who is eligible for its implementation of the program. States are not required to participate in the program, although all have since 1982. Medicaid recipients must be U.S. citizens or qualified non-citizens, and may include low-income adults, their children, and people with certain disabilities. Poverty alone does not necessarily qualify someone for Medicaid.
Socialized medicine is a term used in the United States to describe and discuss systems of universal health care: medical and hospital care for all by means of government regulation of health care and subsidies derived from taxation. Because of historically negative associations with socialism in American culture, the term is usually used pejoratively in American political discourse. The term was first widely used in the United States by advocates of the American Medical Association in opposition to President Harry S. Truman's 1947 health-care initiative.
The Gray Panthers are a series of multi-generational local advocacy networks in the United States which confront ageism and many other social justice issues. The organization was formed by Maggie Kuhn in response to her forced retirement from the Presbyterian Church at the age of 65 in 1970.
The United States Senate Special Committee on Aging was initially established in 1961 as a temporary committee; it became a permanent Senate committee in 1977. As a special committee, it has no legislative authority, but it studies issues related to older Americans, particularly Medicare and Social Security.
The Social Security Amendments of 1965, Pub.L. 89–97, 79 Stat. 286, enacted July 30, 1965, was legislation in the United States whose most important provisions resulted in creation of two programs: Medicare and Medicaid. The legislation initially provided federal health insurance for the elderly and for poor families.
Elderly care, or simply eldercare, is the fulfillment of the special needs and requirements that are unique to senior citizens. This broad term encompasses such services as assisted living, adult day care, long term care, nursing homes, hospice care, and home care. Because of the wide variety of elderly care found nationally, as well as differentiating cultural perspectives on elderly citizens, it cannot be limited to any one practice. For example, many countries in Asia use government-established elderly care quite infrequently, preferring the traditional methods of being cared for by younger generations of family members.
The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, also known as TEFRA, is a United States federal law that rescinded some of the effects of the Kemp-Roth Act passed the year before. Between summer 1981 and summer 1982, tax revenue fell by about 6% in real terms, caused by the dual effects of the economy dipping back into recession and Kemp-Roth's reduction in tax rates, and the deficit was likewise rising rapidly because of the fall in revenue, and the rise in government expenditures. The rapid rise in the budget deficit created concern among many in Congress. TEFRA was created in order to reduce the budget gap by generating revenue through closure of tax loopholes, introduction of tougher enforcement of tax rules, rescinding some of Kemp-Roth's reductions in marginal personal income tax rates that had not yet gone into effect, and raising some rates, especially corporate rates. TEFRA was introduced November 13, 1981 and was sponsored by Representative Pete Stark of California. After much deliberation, the final version was signed by President Ronald Reagan on September 3, 1982.
Ezekiel Jonathan "Zeke" Emanuel is an American oncologist and bioethicist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is the current Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. Previously, Emanuel served as the Diane and Robert Levy University Professor at Penn. He holds a joint appointment at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Wharton School and was formerly an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School until 1998 when he joined the National Institutes of Health.
The Alliance for Retired Americans (ARA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of retired trade union members affiliated with the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Federation, as well as non-union, community-based members. Its predecessor organization was known as the National Council of Senior Citizens.
Nelson Hale Cruikshank was known nationally in the United States as an expert on Social Security, Medicare and policy on aging. He was a Methodist minister, labor union activist and the first director of the Department of Social Security at the AFL-CIO before entering government service in his mid-60s.
Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine is a 1961 LP featuring Ronald Reagan. In this more than ten-minute recording, Reagan "criticized Social Security for supplanting private savings and warned that subsidized medicine would curtail Americans' freedom" and that "pretty soon your son won't decide when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him." Roger Lowenstein called the LP part of a "stealth program" conducted by the American Medical Association.
Ronald Reagan was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989). A Republican from California, and a former movie actor and governor, he was charismatic, and mixed strong rhetoric with pragmatic solutions reached in compromises with his critics. He energized the conservative movement in the United States starting in 1964. His basic foreign policy was to equal and surpass the Soviet Union in military strength, and put it on the road to what he called "the ash heap of history." By 1985, he began to cooperate closely with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev – they even became friends – and negotiated large-scale disarmament projects. The Cold War was fading away when it suddenly ended as Soviet lost control of Eastern Europe almost overnight in October 1989. That was nine months after Reagan was replaced in the White House by his vice president George Herbert Walker Bush, who was following Reagan's policies. The Soviet Union itself was dissolved in December 1991. In terms of the Reagan doctrine, he promoted military and financial and diplomatic support for anti-Communist insurgencies in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and numerous countries. For the most part local communist power collapsed when the Soviet Union collapsed. In domestic affairs, at a time of stagflation with high unemployment and high inflation, he took dramatic steps. They included a major tax cut, and large scale deregulation of business activities. He took steps to weaken labor unions, and found a bipartisan long-term fix to protect the Social Security system. Although he had the support from the Religious Right, he generally avoided or downplayed social issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and racial integration. He spoke out for prayers in public schools but did not promote a constitutional amendment to allow it, Fighting drugs was a high priority, but promoting feminism was not, even though he did appoint the first women to the Supreme Court. He became an iconic figure to which Republican candidates for the next generation often praised.
Sarah Palin is an American politician, commentator and author who served as the ninth Governor of Alaska, from 2006 to 2009. Palin was the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election alongside Arizona Senator John McCain.
"There you go again" was a phrase spoken during the second presidential debate of 1980 by Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan to his Democratic opponent, incumbent President Jimmy Carter. Reagan would use the line in a few debates over the years, always in a way intended to disarm his opponent.
Edward R. Annis was a Florida surgeon who served as president of the American Medical Association and as president of the World Medical Association. He was one of the most foremost critics of the United States Medicare program.
The proposed America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 was an unsuccessful bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on July 14, 2009. The bill was introduced during the first session of the 111th Congress as part of an effort of the Democratic Party leadership to enact health care reform. The bill was not approved by the House, but was superseded by a similar bill, the proposed Affordable Health Care for America Act, which was passed by the House in November 2009, by a margin of 220-215 votes but later abandoned.
"Death panel" is a political term that originated during the 2009 debate about federal health care legislation to cover the uninsured in the United States. Sarah Palin, former Republican Governor of Alaska, coined the term when she charged that proposed legislation would create a "death panel" of bureaucrats who would decide whether Americans—such as her elderly parents, or children with Down syndrome—were "worthy of medical care". Palin's claim has been referred to as the "death panel myth", as nothing in any proposed legislation would have led to individuals being judged to see if they were worthy of health care.
Healthcare rationing in the United States exists in various forms. Access to private health insurance is rationed on price and ability to pay. Those unable to afford a health insurance policy are unable to acquire a private plan except by employer-provided and other job-attached coverage, and insurance companies sometimes pre-screen applicants for pre-existing medical conditions. Applicants with such conditions may be declined cover or pay higher premiums and/or have extra conditions imposed such as a waiting period.
The Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF) is a governmental agency of the U.S. State of Wisconsin responsible for providing services to assist children and families, including services for children in need of protection or services for their families, adoption and foster care services, licensing of facilities that care for children, background investigations of child caregivers, refugee family services, and child abuse and neglect investigations. It administers the Wisconsin Works (W-2) program, including the child care subsidy program, child support enforcement and paternity establishment, and programs related to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) income support program. The department is also responsible for early child care and education and also administers the licensing and regulation of day care centers.
