Health law not first new program with launch woes

By TOM RAUM | Associated Press 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Multiple problems have snarled the rollout of President Barack Obama's signature health care law.

But it's hardly the first time a new, sprawling government program has been beset by early technical glitches, political hostility and gloom-and-doom denouncements.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced heavy skepticism with his launch of Social Security from 1935 to 1937. And turbulence also rocked subsequent key presidential initiatives, including Lyndon Johnson's rollout of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, Richard Nixon's Supplemental Security Income program in 1974 and George W. Bush's Medicare prescription drugs program in 2006.

Yet these programs today are enormously popular with recipients.

Obama and allies hope history will repeat itself with the health overhaul.

Opposition to programs that were created to benefit the American people were always met with uncertainty and anxiety...but in the long term proved to be well worth it. I believe the same thing will happen with the Health Care Law.