[W]e contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further – we would not be a great country without those commitments.
By that measure, America was not “a great country” for most of her history. Unemployment insurance did not exist in any state until Wisconsin adopted the program in 1931. FDR made the system national law in the Social Security Act of 1935. Lyndon Baines Johnson created Medicare and Medicaid by signing the Social Security Act of 1965.
That means America has been “a great country” for, at most, 46 years. Coincidentally, this time frame happens to overlap with Obama’s life.