Editing Great Society (section)

====Medicare====
{{Main|Medicare (United States)}}
[[File:President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Medicare Bill at the Harry S. Truman Library, 1965.jpg|thumb|300px|President Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965.]]
On August 31, 1964, an amendment to the proposed Social Security Amendments of 1964, which further increased the proposed level of Social Security benefits and added hospital insurance to the program, was passed in the Senate by a vote of 49 to 44. The following day the entire bill passed the Senate by 60 to 28 votes. Following this vote, as noted by one study, "Seeking to ensure that the health insurance proposal emerge from the conference committee as part of the report, the administration flirted with an effort to have the full House of Representatives vote to instruct the conference to yield to the Senate version. Though the health insurance provision appeared to have majority support in the House, the tactic did not, and the idea was dropped. Sure enough, the House conferees voted 3 to 2 against the Senate health provision; the Senate conferees voted 4 to 3 to accept a bill only if Medicare were included."<ref>The Battle for Social Security From FDR's Vision To Bush's Gamble By Nancy J. Altman, 2012</ref> Medicare finally came about with the [[Social Security Act of 1965]] which authorized [[Medicare (United States)|Medicare]] and provided federal funding for many of the medical costs of older Americans.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=99 |title=Social Security Act Amendments (1965) |publisher=Ourdocuments.gov |access-date=August 26, 2013}}</ref> The legislation overcame the bitter resistance, particularly from the [[American Medical Association]], to the idea of [[publicly funded health care]] or "[[socialized medicine]]" by making its benefits available to everyone over sixty-five, regardless of need, and by linking payments to the existing private insurance system.