Three national problems:Health care, abortion, and immigration

Three persistent challenges:National health careRight to life vs. right to chooseImmigration

Why is health care such a problem for the U.S.?

Washington Post, July 18, 2017

The history of national health care in the United States

Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane

The Bill was advocated by activist Dorothea Dix

In 1854, legislation that would have established asylums for the indigent insane, and also blind, deaf, and dumb, via federal land grants to the states.

A Bureau agent stands between armed groups of whites and freedmen in this 1868 drawing from Harper's Weekly.

Freedmen's Bureau, 1865

The National Insurance Act 1911, Great Britain

Failure of the Progressive party to achieve national health care

President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935

Opposition to the Social Security Act

Alf Landon

More than 70,000 people at a Communist Party Rally in New York, protesting against Social Security Act

Huey Long speaks to students at Louisiana State University, 1935 (AP image)

Huey Long

Ronald Reagan opposed “socialized medicine”

Ronald Reagan supports Operation Coffee Cup

President Johnson signing the Medicare amendment. Former President Harry S. Truman (seated) and his wife, Bess, are on the far right

The start of Medicare, 1965

Opposition to Medicare

Senior citizens demonstrate their support of Medicare, 1964 National Library of Medicine #A033437

AMA Opposition to Medicare

Wilbur Mills, House Ways and Means Committee

“President Johnson had a habit of throwing dollars at a question and the question would disappear.”Wilbur Mills

Wilbur Mills

A Congressman from Arkansas, Wilbur Mills was Chairman of the United States House Committee on Ways and Means for nearly two

decades, making him one of the most powerful people in Washington. Mills was also a lush who had run ins with strippers,

including one named Fannie Foxe. Foxe later claimed that he impregnated her and that she had an abortion. Even in spite of his

well publicized antics, Mills nonetheless won re-election in 1974.

Clintons propose national health care

The Clinton health care plan was a 1993 healthcare reform package proposed by the administration of President Bill Clinton and closely associated with the chair of the task force devising the plan, First Lady of the United States Hillary Clinton.The president had campaigned heavily on health care in the 1992 presidential election. The task force was created in January 1993, but its own processes were somewhat controversial and drew litigation. Its goal was to come up with a comprehensive plan to provide universal health care for all Americans, which was to be a cornerstone of the administration's first-term agenda. The president delivered a major health care speech to the US Congress in September 1993. During his speech he proposed an enforced mandate for employers to provide health insurance coverage to all of their employees.

First Lady Hillary Clinton at her presentation on health care in September 1993

Medicare Part D, also called the Medicare prescription drug benefit, is an optional United States federal-government program to help Medicare beneficiaries pay for self-administered prescription drugs through prescription drug insurance.

Part D was originally proposed by President Clinton in 2000 and enacted as part of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (which also made changes to the public Part C Medicare health plan program) and went into effect on January 1, 2006.[2]

Opposition to the plan was heavy from conservatives, libertarians, and the health insurance industry. The industry produced a highly effective television ad, "Harry and Louise", in an effort to rally public support against the plan.Instead of uniting behind the original proposal, many Democrats offered a number of competing plans of their own. Hillary Clinton was drafted by the Clinton Administration to head a new Task Force and sell the plan to the American people, which ultimately backfired amid the barrage from the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries and considerably diminished her own popularity. On September 26, 1994, the final compromise Democratic bill was declared dead by Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell.

The Clintons answer back

A recent history of health care reform legislation

G.W. Bush years:In 2001, a Patients' Bill of Rights Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Actin January 2007, Senator Ron Wyden introduced the Healthy Americans Act (S. 334) in the Senate.

"Economic Survey of the United States 2008: Health Care Reform" by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, published in December 2008, :

Tax benefits of employer-based insurances should be abolished.The resulting tax revenues should be used to subsidize the purchase of insurance by individuals.These subsidies, "which could take many forms, such as direct subsidies or refundable tax credits, would improve the current situation in at least two ways: they would reach those who do not now receive the benefit of the tax exclusion; and they would encourage more cost-conscious purchase of health insurance plans and health care services as, in contrast to the uncapped tax exclusion, such subsidies would reduce the incentive to purchase health plans with little cost sharing."

In December 2008, the Institute for America's Future, proposed that the government should offer a public health insurance plan to compete on a level playing field with private insurance plans.This was said to be the basis of the Obama/Biden plan.

The argument is based on three basic points:Firstly, public plans success at managing cost control (Medicare medical spending rose

4.6% p.a. compared 7.3% for private health insurance on a like-for-like basis in the 10 years from 1997 to 2006).

Secondly, public insurance has better payment and quality-improvement methods because of its large databases, new payment approaches, and care-coordination strategies.

Thirdly, it can set a standard against which private plans must compete, which would help unite the public around the principle of broadly shared risk while building greater confidence in government in the long term.

Sen. McCain rejects “skinny repeal” of Obamacare

“Repeal and Replace”

Fact check:Actual premium increases since 1999

Premiums finally start to recede as uninsured rates drop.

Who has the right of privacy?How does that affect abortion?

The right to choose, or the rights of the unborn:A question of the right to privacy

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1868

The Abortion Debate

Roe V. Wade

History of abortion laws in the United States

Cole, George; Frankowski, Stanislaw. Abortion and protection of the human fetus : legal problems in a cross-cultural perspective, p. 20 (1987): "By 1900 every state in the Union had an anti-abortion prohibition."

A short history of Roe v. Wade

What do the opponents of Roe v. Wade say?

1. The Court's decision in Roe v. Wade exceeded its constitutional authority.

2. The Court misrepresents the history of abortion practice and attitudes toward abortion.

3. The majority opinion in Roe wrongly characterizes the common law of England regarding the status of abortion.

4. The Court distorts the purpose and legal weight of state criminal abortion statutes.

5. A privacy right to decide to have an abortion has no foundation in the text or history of the Constitution.

6. Although it reads the 14th Amendment extremely expansively to include a right of privacy to decide whether to abort a child, the Court in Roe adopts a very narrow construction of the meaning of "persons" to exclude unborn children.

7. The Roe Court assumed the role of a legislature in establishing the trimester framework.8. What Roe gives, Doe takes away.9. The Court describes the right to abortion as "fundamental." 10. Despite the rigid specificity of the trimester framework, the opinion gives little guidance to states concerning the permissible scope of abortion regulation.

Immigration to the United States:A perennial issue.

A sketch of an ocean steamer passing the Statue of Liberty in1887. Credit: The Library of Congress

Scots Irish immigration

Whisky Rebellion 1791https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWoymDtZ9jE

Irish immigration in 1840s

The Irish famine of 1845-50

Irish immigration to U.S.

“No Irish Need Apply”

European immigration 1848 1890

Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, 1902

The ”Great Wave” of immigration, 1880-1920

Post-war immigration, 1920s – 1950s

President Donald Trump inspects border wall prototypes in Otay Mesa on March 13, 2018. (Credit: Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images)

A brief history of immigration to the U.S. – state by state

Recent immigration patterns

Mexican migration to the United States in three categories. Surce: Immigration Statistics for the 21st Century, Douglas S. Massey, 2010 published by NIH

The first braceros arriving in California from Mexico in 1917

Mexican workers await legal employment in the United States, 1954

Migrant workers in California

The H2A temporary agricultural program establishes a means for agricultural employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic workers to bring nonimmigrant foreign workers to the U.S. to perform agricultural labor or services of a temporary or seasonal nature.

Pro-Immigration Initiatives Can Happen at the State LevelKarthick Ramakrishnan, Professor and associate dean of the school of public policy at the University of California, Riverside, is co-author of "The New Immigration Federalism" and "Framing Immigrants."UPDATED SEPTEMBER 12, 2016, 3:21 AM

The prospects for immigration reform at the state level look much brighter than they do in Washington. States like California and Connecticut have taken the lead in passing a variety of pro-integration initiatives. The results of these efforts can help other states.

Pres. Trump on immigration

Still a lively issue

Next week:

“Fake news”, “alternate facts” and divisive rhetoric