ABSTRACT
The enthusiasm of Medicare's promoters for future action persisted despite the obstacles of the Eisenhower years. The debate over the Forand bill revealed a pattern of disagreement that would continue to limit the alternatives facing the Congress. The disagreement over the merits of the Forand bill illustrated the persistent divergent approaches to problems of social welfare in American politics. The Kerr-Mills bill of 1960 reflected the conception of appropriate federal responses that conservative congressional leaders felt compelled to offer as a substitute for Medicare proposals. Both Mills and Kerr were prepared to cope with the worst problem—the health costs of the very poor among the aged—as a way of avoiding Medicare programs in the future. The election of 1960 thus marked a pronounced shift for Medicare from the politics of legislative impossibility characteristic of the previous eight years to the politics of possibility.
