Reflections on Implementing Medicare (Second Edition)

January 2001

Reflections on Implementing Medicare, originally printed in the spring of 1993, provides a historical reflection on the early days of a program enacted in 1965 to provide health care coverage to 19 million elderly Americans. This second edition was released by the study panel on Medicare Management and Governance as part of the Academy’s Restructuring Medicare for the Long Term Project. The report provides useful insights into the intentions of Medicare’s founders and an historical benchmark against which to gauge the program’s evolution over the last three-and-a-half decades.