Social Reform Period (1960-1970)
During this time, Medicare and Medicaid were introduced by the President Lyndon Johnson. America looked like a “country that was blessed and had hospitals and professionals that were the envy of the world” (Stevens, 1996). However, doctors worked many hours because poor and elderly citizens had more access to health care. Doctors stated that “lower-class patients were often dissatisfied with their medical services and wanted government medicine” (Stevens, 1996). This caused a strained relationship with doctors and patients and patients didn’t want to receive care anymore. The government tried to solve the problem by enacting “the Kerr-Mills Act of 1960 to provide medical indigence for beneficiaries” (Stevens, 1996). The elderly in America celebrated the fact that the government was meeting their expectations. They had access to quality health care and a program to help with medical fees.
Period of Shifting Focus (1970s and 1980s)
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It caused severe problems within our public health system as well. According to Patel & Rushefsky (2005), “the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s caused the public health system to fail to respond to the crisis quickly and revealed blemishes in our public health system”. During this time, local hospital budgets around the U.S. were decreased significantly. People had to be turned away because hospitals could only afford to examine patients with the worst health issues. Societal attitudes during this time were very angry. People were furious because AIDS was spreading across the nation like a wildfire and people needed to be treated for the condition. This a horrible decade for the country because people were losing loved ones to a condition they hardly knew anything about at the