Today, we welcome a guest post from Dr. Muriel R. Gillick, author of Old and Sick in America: The Journey through the Health Care System, on the founding of the national health insurance program we call Medicare. Since the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, the American health care system has steadily grown in size and complexity. Old and Sick in America takes readers on a narrative tour of American health care, incorporating the stories of older patients as they travel from the doctor's office to the hospital to the skilled nursing facility, and...