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When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law on July 30, 1965, Americans 65 and older were the age group least likely to have health insurance. "No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine," Johnson said at the signing ceremony. "No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years. No longer will young families see their own incomes, and their own hopes, eaten away simply because they are carrying out their deep moral obligations to their parents, and to their uncles, and their aunts." (7/29)

At 50, Medicare is comfortably settled into middle age, but with some of the aches and pains that go with getting older. As the granddaddy of the U.S. health care system, it helps pay for hospitalizations, doctors’ visits and prescription drugs for 55 million Americans who might otherwise go without. (Buck, 7/28)

The number of people enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program continued to inch upward in May, according to updated federal statistics. The total number of people who were receiving Medicaid or children’s health coverage benefits stood at 71.6 million people, about 12.8 million people on average more than in a three-month period in 2013, before the main coverage expansions in the health care law took place. (Adams, 7/28)