Medicare and Medicaid turn 60 – and face historic cuts decades in the making

Protesters hold signs at protect Medicaid in Washington, on 7 May 2025. Photograph: Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Caring Across Generations

The US’s largest public health insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid, turn 60 years old on Wednesday – a birthday that will be celebrated only weeks after Republicans enacted the largest cuts to healthcare in the nation’s history.

Passed in the civil rights era, the sister health insurance programs served as tools for the Democratic president Lyndon Johnson to desegregate American healthcare and fight poverty.