The year was 1962, and then-president John F. Kennedy was puzzling over why so many young men were deemed ineligible for the draft. He commissioned a government study that provided the answer: Too many recruits were suffering from physical and mental health conditions that, if caught earlier in life, could have been treated and corrected.
That’s why his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, asked Congress for a comprehensive benefit package that would screen children early and often for a range of conditions: vision and hearing problems, asthma, development delays, and other health issues.
“Our whole society pays a toll for the unhealthy and [disabled] children who go without medical care: a total of incalculable human suffering, unemployment, rising rates of disabling disease, and expenditures for special education and institutions,” Johnson wrote in his message to Congress.
What emerged was a screening protocol for children receiving healthcare through Medicaid, which now covers nearly half of U.S. children. Known as Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment, or EPSDT, Medicaid’s pediatric benefit package covers screenings and subsequent treatments that have helped generations of children grow into healthy adults and, in some cases, into capable men and women protecting our country.