Abstract
On the doorstep of its fiftieth anniversary, Medicaid at last could achieve the ambitious goals President Lyndon B. Johnson enunciated for the Great Society upon signing Medicare and Medicaid into law in 1965. Although the spotlight shone on Medicare at the time, Medicaid was the “sleeper program” that caught America’s neediest in its safety net—but only some of them. Medicaid’s exclusion of childless adults and other “undeserving poor” loaned an air of “otherness” to enrollees, contributing to its stigma and seeming political fragility. Now, Medicaid touches every American life. One in five Americans benefits from Medicaid’s healthcare coverage, and that number soon will increase to one in four due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Medicaid’s universalization reveals that the program can now be best understood as a vehicle for civil rights.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
3-18-2016
Repository Citation
Huberfeld, Nicole and Roberts, Jessica L., "Medicaid Expansion as Completion of the Great Society" (2014). Law Faculty Scholarly Articles. 530.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/law_facpub/530
Notes/Citation Information
Nicole Huberfeld & Jessica L. Roberts, Medicaid Expansion as Completion of the Great Society, 2014 U. Ill. L. Rev. Slip Opinions 1 (2014).