Reply #25: Starr also covers LBJ's big Medicare mistakes--lest we forget

[WeCanWorkItOut]

For general background, there's Paul Starr's 1982 book, The Social Transformation of American Medicine. He gives a few pages specifically to the Kennedy/Johnson story.

Starr also covers the problem of Johnson giving away too much the medical lobby, a major issue circa 1980, when there was still a lot of inflation, partly, of course related to Vietnam, partly to oil issues, but partly to health care (all of which painful stuff you no doubt recall!).

So on page 378 (of my paperback edition), Starr concludes: "An administration more concerned with the budgetary consequences of concessions . . . would not have yielded so much. The government and liberal reformers would pay a price for this choice later on."

And so, fellow liberal reformers, let's be careful. Times are getting tougher.