Opinion: After 50 years of ‘health crisis,’ chuck the Chicken Little rhetoric
Although Americans love anniversaries, we have overlooked the political importance of July 10, 1969. Speaking on that date from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, President Richard Nixon became the first president to declare that America faced a “massive crisis” in health care in the absence of “revolutionary change.”
Similar predictions of impending catastrophe have, incredibly, persisted through each presidency for a half-century. The Trump administration, for example, has warned that “the system we have is unsustainable and it cannot continue.” Given the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, in which respondents picked health care as the top priority for the federal government, as well as the evidence from the first two Democratic presidential candidate debates, this election season will surely bring more of the same.
