1965 Medicare amendment

For Filipino nurses, 1965 Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act is the invisible hand of providence. America need nurses and doctors to care for the sick and elderly. Philippines graduated more nurses and doctors than the economy can absorb. Classic free market at work globally. Benign assimilation of America began.

The elderly population was continuing to increase at a rapid rate. Between 1950 and 1963, their number grew from about 12 m to 17.5 m, or from 8.1 to 9.4 % of the total population. Meanwhile, the cost of hospital care continued to rise at about 6.7 % a year, several times the annual increase in the cost of living. From 1960 to 1964, average hospital costs increased from about $29 to $40 a day, with no sign of any letup in the rate of increase. As a result, private health insurance carriers were repeatedly forced to increase premium rates (or else "bleed" the coverage of their policies), making private insurance ever more prohibitive (or less adequate) for the many old people who were living on fixed incomes. By 1964 the proportion of the aged who were privately insured for hospital care seemed to be leveling off at about 50%. A Senate study that year estimated that only one-half of the policies issued to
retirees provided comprehensive coverage (75% or more of average hospital bill). In other words, only about 1 in 4 of the aged had adequate hospital insurance protection.
When the King-Anderson bill was submitted anew to the 89th Congress, in January 1965, it was accorded the honor of being the first bill introduced in each chamber (H.R. 1 and S. 1). Immediately afterward, Chairman Mills took charge of re-drafting the bill into its final form. During the next 2 months, the chairman was the focus of a many-sided negotiation process between the various interests that would be responsible for administering the Medicare program, or who had some stake in its operation--physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, nursing home representatives, State health and welfare officials, labor leaders, insurance industry representatives, Federal officials, and many others. Inevitably, there were conflicts over technical matters, some of which had important economic, social, and political implications ; but never during these months was the basic policy decision in doubt, despite last-ditch resistance by organized medicine and some of its allies.

Philippines, Vietnam war, 1972

1972, Marcos declared Martial Law, major step toward authoritarian, dictatorial rule with Philippine constitution nod!
Unofficial State Dept summary of Southeast Asia foreign relations, 1969 - 1976 at this site. This unofficial State Dept summary is anti-Nixon in my view. Nothing change at the State Dept since then.

Fissures in the normally solid relationship, however, emerged during the
first Nixon administration and were centered around the military base renegotiation process. In the initial discussions, President Nixon’s insistence that the United States drastically cut its military personnel in the Philippines as a means of improving the U.S. balance of payments frustrated Philippine officials. Crimes committed against Filipinos by U.S. servicemen were a particularly problematic issue and added further complications to the base negotiations. Tensions also emerged over the new Philippine constitutional prohibition that prevented non-Filipinos from owning land, which created considerable problems for land-holding U.S. citizens and companies in the Philippines. Finally, Marcos’s support of the extension of the Laurel-Langley
agreements, giving preferential treatment to Philippine products in the United States, did little to smooth the growing discord as the agreements ran against
the general U.S. move towards free trade. The Nixon administration recognized the Philippines as a special friend, but the culture of corruption, the imposition of martial law in 1972, and the dictatorial tendencies of the Marcos government worried some U.S. officials. The Embassy highlighted these problems and U.S. officials tried to encourage Marcos to reform his government’s practices and move back toward democracy. As U.S. critics vocalized their concerns about the Marcos government, particularly in the Senate’s Symington subcommittee, the Nixon administration rallied behind Marcos and worked hard to blunt criticism of the Philippines in Congress. Instead of dealing directly with reports from U.S. Government experts that there were real problems in the Philippines, administration officials tended to ignore or downplay the significance of those statements. Although the Nixon administration neither encouraged nor approved of the imposition of martial law, it choose to continue working with Marcos as his support for the Vietnam war and the Philippine role in the Pacific overshadowed doubts about the country’s internal policies. Yet, while the Nixon administration appeared to support Marcos, the U.S. Embassy in Manila maintained a low-level dialogue with Senators Benigno Aquino and Sergio Osmena and other prominent Marcos opponents. It was this failure to fully embrace the Marcos government that, on occasion, inspired concern in the Marcos family that the United States was secretly working with Marcos opponents.
Although U.S. officials assured Marcos that they were not actively supporting
other candidates, or Marcos’s opponents, a lingering doubt remained within the
Marcos family.

Fall of Vietnam & Watergate

The final outcome of the war was primarily the result of historical events outside the realm of strategic thinking. In the United States the antiwar movement created sufficient turmoil that the functioning of government was altered if not impaired, and the Watergate scandal, which must be seen as a war-related event to be understood fully, created an environment that doomed the President's Vietnam policy to failure. Political weakness in the face of an assertive Congress and a population grown tired of the war prevented Richard Nixon from implementing a program for the protection of Vietnam based on the use of American firepower instead of manpower. The impact of Watergate could not be calculated in advance, but in the end it was decisive. Although clearly in the realm of speculation, the argument that, without Watergate, President Nixon might have successfully defended the RVN through the continued use of American air power and aid cannot be easily dismissed.

Read chapter 7 of John M. Gates, The US Army and Irregular Warfare

US Army influence of 19th century Philippines

John M. Gates historical narrative of the pacification of the Philippines.

Many American commanders in the Philippines never lost sight of two things. First, their goal was to obtain Filipino acceptance of American rule in a way that would gain the cooperation of the Filipino people and prevent the need to hold the Philippines through the continued use of military force. Second, to accomplish that goal the army and the colonial government had to provide acceptable political, economic, and social alternatives to those put forth by the revolutionaries. Both the compatibility of American and Filipino liberalism and the progressive orientation of the army's officers helped the Americans accomplish their goal of gaining Filipino acceptance of American sovereignty.

Analogy on Philippines being Iraq of the 19th century is showing, not Vietnam. Then as now, the US Army played an important role to the masses.