Social problems and attempts to tackle them - OCR APresident Kennedy’s attempts to improve society - continued

Health care

People in the USA were expected to pay for their health care. As this was very expensive, people needed insurance to cover the costs of any treatment. This cost a lot of money, so many American citizens were unable to afford it. They had to rely on substandard hospitals and treatment.

In 1961, Kennedy started looking at providing free healthcare for people over the age of 65. Many people could not afford health insurance after they retired. In 1962, Kennedy's proposal was blocked by Congress. However, it continued to be discussed until it was eventually passed in 1965.

Housing and welfare reforms

While he failed to make any progress on health care, Kennedy was able to introduce reforms to help poorer Americans:

• He increased the minimum wage by 25 per cent, to $1.25 per hour.
• Public welfare amendments in 1962 (commonly known as the 1962 Social Security Act) provided money to help support elderly people, the unemployed and children whose fathers were unemployed.
• There were also measures to help the unemployed. For example, the 1962 Manpower Development and Training Act helped people without jobs to get training.
• The 1961 Area Redevelopment Act provided money to states to support the unemployed.
• The 1961 Housing Act helped to improve living conditions by providing cheap loans for developers to build better housing in towns and cities.

Civil rights

President Kennedy was an open supporter of civil rights. He appointed Thurgood Marshall, one of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP) lawyers involved in the Brown v Board of Education of Topeka case, to be a senior federal judge. Kennedy was prepared to intervene when there was evidence of individual states trying to avoid implementing civil rights rulings. For example, he threatened to sue the state of Louisiana for refusing to fund desegregated schools.

In 1962, Kennedy sent large numbers of federal troops and US Marshals to protect a black American student, James Meredith, as he attended the University of Mississippi. The university had only allowed white students to study there and Meredith faced a lot of opposition to his application.

In 1963, Kennedy helped Martin Luther King and the civil rights protestors in the Birmingham marches. He put pressure on the governor, George Wallace, to force the police to release the protestors who had been put in prison. He also pressured Wallace to give more jobs to black Americans and to allow black Americans to be promoted.

In 1963, Kennedy began the process of getting Congress to pass a law to end segregation and discrimination against black Americans. However, this was only passed by his successor, Lyndon B Johnson, after Kennedy’s assassination.