I recently got a new knee. Or to be precise, I got my second new knee. About 14 years ago, I was limping around like an old man. X-rays showed the cartilage on half of my right knee was gone. So I had that “bone on bone” problem that lots of old people face. Doctors said I should get just half of my right knee replaced because the other half was just fine. So that’s what happened back in about 2012.
But they warned me that the cartilage in the other half of my right knee would probably wear away eventually. And eventually turned out to be about 3 months ago. So that’s why a couple of weeks ago I was back in the hospital. This time, the doctors took out that 14-year-old half knee and gave me a brand new whole complete knee.
But I’m not writing this column to share my boring medical history with you. Instead, I’m writing this column to share some views about how our attitudes toward government health care have evolved over the years.
As you might guess, my recent medical procedures will end up costing many tens of thousands of dollars. But I’m really not all that concerned because the combination of Medicare and civil service health coverage I have will essentially pick up all those costs. And that got me thinking about some experiences I had about 50 years ago, shortly after I started working for the Social Security Administration.
Back in about 1975, a couple of years after I was hired by the SSA to work in one of their local field offices in the farm country of central Illinois, I was assigned to clean out an office storeroom. As part of that effort, I came across a stash of yellowing public information materials: things like old pamphlets and brochures dating back to the early days of the Social Security and Medicare programs.
There were also some dusty 16mm movie reels that contained public information films intended to be used as educational materials to supplement speeches or other presentations that the SSA’s public affairs employees would make to various community groups and organizations.
Luckily, I also found an old movie projector in this storeroom. I was pleased with that because I really wanted to watch some of the old PR films, mostly because of a fascination I had developed early in my career with the history of Social Security. But I must admit I also figured I might get a bit of a chuckle out of the old-fashioned film techniques and maybe the hackneyed messages the movies would contain.
I wasn’t disappointed in either case when I watched one film from the early 1950s that showed an elderly couple all dressed up in their “Sunday best”—a suit and tie for the husband and a dress and heels for the wife—going to their local Social Security office to sign up for that new-fangled government program called Social Security. Contrast that with my Social Security-filing experience not all that long ago, when I nonchalantly sat at my computer in my pajamas to apply for benefits!
But it was another government PR movie that I found even more fascinating. It was a film called “Welcome to Medicare—1966.” It was a movie produced by the SSA to introduce the American people to the then brand-new Medicare program. It told the story of an aging farm couple from Iowa. The husband, probably in his late 60s, had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. After learning that her husband would be OK but would require extensive hospitalization, which quickly used up what little health insurance they had, there was a scene in which his wife was talking to the doctors. She said something like this: “I want you to make sure Elmer gets the best care possible. And don’t worry, I’m going to go home and sell the farm so that we will be able to pay all of these hospital expenses.”
And then we got to the pitch for the new Medicare program. One of the doctors tells her, “Oh you won’t have to concern yourself with that Mildred, for you see, the government has a brand new program called Medicare, and it’s going to pay most of Elmer’s bills. Why, you‘ll just have to pay a small deductible out of your own pocket, and that’s all. So you’ll be able to keep the farm and once we get Elmer up and around again, he can go back to raising those fine hogs of his.”
Mildred had the last line in the movie: “Thank God for the government and this wonderful new Medicare program!” Fade to black.
And it just so happened that the very evening following my storeroom cleaning stint and viewing the old Medicare movie, I was watching TV at home with my wife. A commercial came on promoting a Medicare supplement plan. It featured several obviously well-to-do men playing golf. As a guy was getting ready to putt, one of his colleagues asked about his recent gallbladder surgery. “Oh, I’m doing just great,” he said, “but I tell you, I’m kind of ticked off because that darn government Medicare program stiffed me with part of the bill. Why, I had to pay $100 out of my own pocket!” And that led to a pitch from one of the other golfers for the Medicare supplement plan that would have picked up those extra expenses not paid by Medicare.
Now I totally understand that both the old movie and the TV commercial I watched were fiction. But I think their messages did reflect the tenor of the times. And here is what struck me. I was amazed at how people’s expectations of their government had changed so dramatically in just a few years. In 1965, we had a woman who was willing to sell the farm in order to pay her husband’s hospital bill. And ten years later, we had a rich guy on a golf course griping because the government was forcing him to cough up a measly hundred bucks out of his own pocket to pay for his hospital stay!
And also contrast that corny pro-government Medicare movie message with today’s ever-so-cynical anti-government health care mood that seems to envelop this country. As the Social Security and Medicare programs face a funding crunch, I’m reminded that so many Americans love all the benefits provided by Social Security and Medicare, as long as they don’t have to pay too much for them. (Social Security and Medicare taxes haven’t increased in over 40 years!)
