THE VALUED VOICE

In 1965, five years into Warren Von Ehren’s stewardship of WHA, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare and Medicaid laws. For WHA, the passage of Medicare forever changed the face of the organization. WHA morphed from being largely an affinity organization into an organization focusing on Advocacy as its primary mission.
 
Between 1960 and 1965, the health coverage debate was a front burner issue in Congress, with dozens of proposals introduced and testimonies given by representatives of major organizations, including the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, and the AFL-CIO.
 
Debate over the program began two decades earlier when President Harry S. Truman sent a message to Congress asking for legislation establishing a national health insurance plan.
 
After Congress passed the legislation in the summer of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill on July 30, 1965 with former President Truman at the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, MO, to recognize Truman’s early effort to establish a national health insurance program. Former President Truman was enrolled as Medicare’s first beneficiary and received the first Medicare card.
 
For WHA, Medicare advocacy has focused on payment adequacy to ensure patient access. And beginning with the passage of the DRG payment methodology in 1983, the issue of equity also took center stage as WHA led a national effort to focus on national Medicare payment disparities.
 
With Medicaid, payment adequacy and expanded coverage have been at the center of WHA advocacy activities. Efforts have included working with Gov. Tommy Thompson in 1999 to pass BadgerCare, crafting a hospital assessment with Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration in 2009 that improved coverage and hospital payment, and focusing on enhancing the disproportionate share (DSH) program in more recent years.