Health Care Reform Rhetoric Over Time

The rhetoric presidents have used to talk about health care reform hasn't changed much over time--nor have the reasons why it's needed.

Harry Truman on health care

Excerpt from Truman's address to Congress, November 19th, 1945:

Medicine has made great strides in this generation--especially during the last four years. We owe much to the skill and devotion of the medical profession. In spite of great scientific progress, however, each year we lose many more persons from preventable and premature deaths than we lost in battle or from war injuries during the entire war.

We are proud of past reductions in our death rates. But these reductions have come principally from public health and other community services. We have been less effective in making available to all of our people the benefits of medical progress in the care and treatment of individuals.

In the past, the benefits of modern medical science have not been enjoyed by our citizens with any degree of equality. Nor are they today. Nor will they be in the future--unless government is bold enough to do something about it.

People with low or moderate incomes do not get the same medical attention as those with high incomes. The poor have more sickness, but they get less medical care. People who live in rural areas do not get the same amount or quality of medical attention as those who live in our cities.

Our new Economic Bill of Rights should mean health security for all, regardless of residence, station, or race--everywhere in the United States.

We should resolve now that the health of this Nation is a national concern; that financial barriers in the way of attaining health shall be removed; that the health of all its citizens deserves the help of all the Nation.

Excerpt from Truman's State of the Union address, January 7, 1948:

"I have often and strongly urged that this condition demands a national health program. The heart of the program must be a national system of payment for medical care based on well-tried insurance principles. This great Nation cannot afford to allow its citizens to suffer needlessly from the lack of proper medical care."

"Our ultimate aim must be a comprehensive insurance system to protect all our people equally against insecurity and ill health."

Ronald Reagan on health care before his presidency



Richard Nixon on his health care plan, which fell along with his presidency after the Watergate scandal



An example of the famous "Harry and Louise" ad, paid for by opponents of Bill Clinton's health care reform attempt

President Bill Clinton to a joint session of Congress, September 22, 1993:

"Millions of Americans are just a pink slip away from losing their health insurance, and one serious illness away from losing all their savings. Millions more are locked into the jobs they have now just because they or someone in their family has once been sick and they have what is called the preexisting condition. And on any given day, over 37 million Americans -- most of them working people and their little children -- have no health insurance at all. And in spite of all this, our medical bills are growing at over twice the rate of inflation, and the United States spends over a third more of its income on health care than any other nation on Earth."

Barack Obama on health care

"The very first promise I made on this campaign was that as president, I will sign a universal healthcare plan into law by the end of my first term in office...And the plan begins by covering every American.