The Register's editorial • January 3, 2010

When Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, it got no help from Iowa's U.S. senators. Bourke Hickenlooper and Jack Miller opposed the bill. The Republicans said it expanded government, paid for care of those who could afford it themselves, and simply wasn't needed.“This is a complicated system of state medicine going directly into socialism,” Hickenlooper told The Des Moines Register. “In the long run, it may well have an adverse effect on the quality of American medicine.”As it turns out, of course, Medicare and Medicaid are not socialism — when the government essentially operates the medical system. And rather than negatively impacting American medicine, these...