Health Care in the Early 1960s - 21st Century

Read Stevens, Rosemary A. Health Care in the Early 1960s. Health Care Financing Review/ Winter 1996/Volume 18, Number 2, linked below: http://www.ssa.gov/history/pdf/HealthCareEarly1960s.pdf

After reviewing the video clips and reading about healthcare in the 1960s, what do you think about the idea that technological and medical advances would bring an end to hunger, disease, drudgery, and unemployment in the United States? How has technology helped in these areas and where has it been less helpful? In what other domains has technology improved or challenged life in America in the 21st century?

(Video Information Written out) We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone.
Finally, in a field where the United States and the Soviet Union have a special capacity--in the field of space--there is room for new cooperation, for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon. Space offers no problems of sovereignty; by resolution of this Assembly, the members of the United Nations have foresworn any claim to territorial rights in outer space or on celestial bodies, and declared that international law and the United Nations Charter will apply. Why, therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction, and expenditure?

At Cape Canaveral, FL the army's Jupiter sea rocket is ready for America's 2nd attempt to launch a space satellite. No relation to the IRBM Jupiter, this is a rebuilt Redstone, a 200 mile missile, carrying instead of a warhead, 3 stages of solid fuel booster rockets and the Explorer, a 6 foot bullet, only inches across, crammed to the electronic gear.

This close up of the United States' edition was made at the press conference with leaders of the scientific teams: Dr Vernovan Drum, Dr. James Van Allen, and Dr. William Pickering, a three-way collaboration between private industry, academic science, and the military. The rocket is on its launching pad. The hour's long countdown approaches 0, a moment of enormous tension, for every missile launching is still in experiment. Any one of tens of thousands of things can go wrong with catastrophic results. But all that can be done with sure perfection has been done. The moment is at hand. The countdown reaches............zero.

Some three minutes later, Explorer is in orbit, broadcasting to the world, its coded scientific data. Cosmic intensity, meteor impact, solar radiation: these are the dry facts that will help carry a man into the age of space.

It is a time in which wonder grows weary at the common place of miracles. And in which hope strides forward in seven league boots hasten by knowledge that modern technology can bring an end to hunger, illiteracy, chronic ill-health, drudgery, unemployment and material want. Man has probed to the very heart of matter and turned it to energy.