Phia Group

Jimmy Carter’s Complicated Healthcare Legacy

On March 21, 2023
In the Bicentennial Summer of 1976—during which Jimmy Carter was campaigning for president—there was nonstop pageantry. Patriotism reached fever pitch as parade floats washed in red, white, and blue streamed through smalltown America while Uncle Sam-inspired merchandise flooded the shelves of department stores across the entire union. But overshadowed by the unprecedented amount of hoopla was the sobering reality that the then-two-century-old nation had a broken healthcare system: at this moment in time, 26 million Americans lacked health insurance altogether while another 28 million possessed only minimal coverage. And Carter, who grew up on a backwoods Georgia peanut farm with neither running water nor electricity, sympathized with the plight of the working poor by endorsing the concept that America needed universal healthcare coverage—to the extent that it was economically (and politically) feasible.