Happy Birthday, Medicare!

The anniversary of what became Title XVIII of the Social Security Act: the Medicare program.

(Today is also the 56th anniversary of Title XIV of the Social Security Act: Medicaid).

Medicare has been expanded, cut, reformed, and changed numerous times since President Johnson signed it into law in 1965. The most recent reforms came under Obamacare, which strengthened the Medicare Trust Fund, reformed payments to providers, cut hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful subsidies to private insurance companies, and provided seniors with an array of new or improved benefits.

In particular, Obamacare is closing the notorious prescription drug donut hole and in the meantime has saved 6.6 MILLION seniors more than $7 BILLION on their prescriptions. In addition, during just the first six months of this year, more than 16.5 MILLION seniors have taken advantage of preventive care services that are now free thanks to Obamacare.

Unfortunately, Republicans opposed the creation of Medicare 48 years ago, and they are doing their best to force Draconian cuts to the program today and for decades to come. Just this week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proposed shifting billions in costs to seniors and businesses by raising the Medicare eligibility age and House Republicans are planning their 40th dead-end vote to repeal Obamacare.

BOTTOM LINE: Thanks in part to Obamacare, Medicare is still going strong 48 years later. And that’s definitely something worth celebrating.

1946

JUL31

Marilyn Monroe, then known as Norma Jean Dougherty, signs her first movie contract, with Twentieth-Century Fox. She will be paid $150 a week.

Source: history.com

1498 – Christopher Columbus, on his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, arrived at the island of Trinidad.

1790 – The first U.S. patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for his process for making potash and pearl ashes. The substance was used in fertilizer.

1792 – The cornerstone of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, PA, was laid. It was the first building to be used only as a U.S. government building.

1919 – Germany’s Weimar Constitution was adopted.

1928 – MGM’s Leo the lion roared for the first time. He introduced MGM’s first talking picture, “White Shadows on the South Seas.”

1932 – Enzo Ferrari retired from racing. In 1950 he launched a series of cars under his name.

1945 – Pierre Laval of France surrendered to Americans in Austria.

1948 – U.S. President Truman helped dedicate New York International Airport (later John F. Kennedy International Airport) at Idlewild Field.

1955 – Marilyn Bell of Toronto, Canada, at age 17, became the youngest person to swim the English Channel.

1959 – The Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) was founded. The group is known for being an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization.

1961 – The first tie in All-Star Game major league baseball history was recorded when it was stopped in the 9th inning due to rain at Boston’s Fenway Park.

1964 – The American space probe Ranger 7 transmitted pictures of the moon’s surface. 

1971 – Men rode in a vehicle on the moon for the first time in a lunar rover vehicle (LRV).

1981 – The seven-week baseball players’ strike came to an end when the players and owners agreed on the issue of free agent compensation.

1982 – Yugoslavia imposed a six-month freeze on prices.

1989 – A pro-Iranian group in Lebanon released a videotape reportedly showing the hanged body of American hostage William R. Higgins.

1989 – The Game Boy handheld video game device was released in the U.S.

1991 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

1995 – The Walt Disney Company agreed to acquire Capital Cities/ABC in a $19 billion deal.
Disney movies, music and books

1999 – The spacecraft Lunar Prospect crashed into the moon. It was a mission to detect frozen water on the moon’s surface. The craft had been launched on January 6, 1998. 

2007 – The iTunes Music Store reached 2 million feature length films sold.

The SAVE program was created in 1986-1987, and was designed only to verify immigration status for public benefits, not citizenship, and not elections

SAVE

• does not show citizenship
• mislabels naturalized citizens
• produces inaccurate “noncitizen” lists
• creates legal liability
• triggers lawsuits
• causes wrongful purges
• is not designed for elections

The majority of states avoid it now, but there was a time in 2019 when Texas tried to use SAVE to flag noncitizens on voter rolls again. Unfortunately, thousands were naturalized citizens. There were lawsuits, and found that the list was so inaccurate that Texas had to withdraw it, and the Sec of State at the time resigned.

However, there was a notable incident in Texas in 2019 when the state attempted to use the program to flag noncitizens on voter rolls. Unfortunately, this effort resulted in the misidentification of thousands of naturalized citizens as noncitizens. The legal challenges that followed revealed the significant inaccuracies in the list, leading Texas to withdraw it and prompting the resignation of the Secretary of State at that time.

This didn’t create a policy change; it exposed the flaw.

This incident did not lead to a policy change; it exposed serious flaws in the program. In the 2000s, several states considered accessing SAVE and signing data-sharing agreements. DHS documentation started referencing SAVE as a verification tool for elections in various memos, not publicly.

In 2024-2025, a federal judge allowed access to SAVE and the voter rolls in Florida, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio, which became politically charged.

Today, the same judge recognized the conflict but allowed four states, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio, to have access to the SAVE system. This decision contradicted federal rulings and continues to lack the required notification process. While voters were being flagged quietly, public awareness is starting to explode.

I remember being asked about my name, spoken to in Spanish, being called into HR in the 80s and asked my country of origin. That same mindset — asking the wrong question to the wrong people — is exactly why SAVE is dangerous today.

SAVE cannot verify citizenship and does not contain citizenship data — which is why using it to purge voter rolls is fundamentally flawed.

To be sure, this blurb was due to the Democracy Docket’s great job of exposing the truth in the news

Sources: Democracy Docket, LWV, Brennan Center, ai and the Internet articles