This reminds me of an episode of The West Wing, where President Bartlett is inspired by Kennedy’s To the Moon speech, and decides that he wants to make a similar dramatic statement. In his case, it was to have a cure cancer in ten years. In my mind, curing cancer is similar, in intent at least, to universal healthcare—essentially, using medicine to help more people live longer, healthier lives. However, I think that curing a disease a disease or providing everyone with basic healthcare, while extremely beneficial to society, is not quite as inspirational as it was to send someone to the moon in the 1960s.

While I wasn’t alive then, I think it would be the equivalent of a president saying “we will be able to cure death in 10 years!” or “we will be able to send humans to another solar system in ten years!” Those are both dramatic visions that people think are either impossible or will occur in the distant future. And having the president say that they are achievable makes people believe that it is so.