 Former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis hails from Brookline, Mass.
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In the first of eight colloquia to be sponsored by the Connell School of Nursing, Michael Dukakis spoke at Boston College on Monday on the necessity of universal health care coverage in America.
Dukakis, a native of Brookline and graduate of Harvard Law, boasts an impressive political résumé: He has served four terms as a Massachusetts state legislator, served as Massachusetts governor in 1974, 1982, and 1986, won the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1988 but lost to George Bush, and since 1991 has taught as a political science professor at both Northeastern and UCLA.
In his current position as a researcher for national health-care reform, Dukakis has taken on some pressing questions.
The first emotion he expressed on the subject was outrage and wonder at the United States' lack of universal health care. "For this nation to be the only advanced, industrialized nation not to guarantee health coverage to every resident is outrageous. The countries we like to compare ourselves to and compete with do so on average at half the cost per capita as we do, with better health outcomes, as best measured by life expectancy and infant mortality," Dukakis said.
In a similar vein, Dukakis noted that countries on the same economic tier as the United States are able to provide substantially broader health care packages for a significantly smaller price.
Dukakis maintained that the situation has not gone unaddressed. Throughout American history, many a prominent politician has attempted to win universal health care coverage for the United States.
In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt became the first presidential candidate to propose universal health insurance, but he was unsuccessful.
Harry S. Truman, who served as president from 1945 to 1953, proposed to introduce universal health insurance every single year of his presidency. Debates and failures followed, with opponents of the program crying socialism at every turn. It wasn't until 1951 when Lyndon B. Johnson proposed coverage only for those ages 60 and over that a fledgling Medicare program was created. And even this proposal didn't succeed until 1964, when Medicare, as it is now known, was finally made available for people 65 and over.
