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At his front-row Senate desk, Louisiana Democrat Russell Long rose last week to open the debate. "The pending bill," he said, glancing at the 387-page document before him, "will be the largest and most significant piece of social legislation ever to pass the Congress in the history of our country. It will do more immediate good for more people who need the attention of their Government than any bill that the Congress has ever enacted."

This was the Senate version of the Johnson Administration's medicare bill, which wound up with a whopping $7.5 billion-a-year price tag, contained the blueprint for a historic program of health protection for the aged and called for the greatest one-shot increase in social-security benefits since their inception in 1935.

Like a Mild Cold. Yet there were times when the Senate seemed to be considering nothing more momentous than a proposal to plant petunias on the Capitol mall. Rarely were more than a few dozen Senators on hand to take part in the debate. Others strolled in occasionally from the cloakrooms to interrupt the proceedings with speeches about dam projects in their home states. In the presiding officer's chair, New York Democrat Robert F. Kennedy leafed idly through a sheaf of clippings about his recent raft trip down the Yampa and Green rivers in Colorado and Utah. After four days of desultory debate, it was all over. Medicare, once the most controversial domestic issue in the U.S., breezed through the Senate like nothing worse than a mild cold. The final vote: 68 to 21.

The Senate version of medicare was even more generous than the bill already passed by the House, adding some $1.5 billion a year to it. Its major features:

>MEDICARE. Some 19 million Americans aged 65 or over would be eligible for 60 days of free hospital care (after an initial $40 payment), stay thereafter at $10 a day. They would also be covered for 175 visits to clinics or house calls by nurses, therapists or interns. Cost: $2.6 billion a year, financed by a separate payroll tax starting at .325 of 1% of wages and rising to .85 of 1% by 1987. In addition, a voluntary, Government-subsidized program costing subscribers $3 a month would cover 80% of doctors' bills (after the first $50) for the elderly. Between 15 million and 18 million are expected to subscribe, at a cost to taxpayers of some $600 million a year.

>SOCIAL SECURITY. Some 20 million social-security recipients would get increases of at least 7% in retirement pensions, retroactive to last Jan. 1. Minimum monthly payments would go up $4 to $44, maximum payments $8.90 to $135.90. Eventually the maximum benefit would reach $168. Other changes: to cover their college years, some 40,000 children of deceased, retired or disabled workers would receive social-security benefits up to the age of 22 instead of 18; some 355,000 people aged 72 or over who are not now covered by social security would be given benefits of up to $35 a month; retired workers would be allowed to earn $1,800 a year, instead of the present $1,200, without losing a cent of social-security benefits. These and other increases would cost the Government close to $3 billion more a year from 1966 on. To finance them, the Senate bill calls for a boost in the basic social-security contribution from the present 3.625% to 5.8% each for employer and employee by 1987. In addition the taxable base would rise from $4,800 to $6,600 by next year. Thus by 1987 the social-security bite for a man earning $6,600 or more would be nearly $385 a year.

"Twilight Zone." To several Senators, that was not enough, and Senator Long, the bill's floor manager, spent most of the week fighting off efforts to broaden coverage. Connecticut Democrat Abraham Ribicoff came up with a $180 million plan to give free, unlimited hospitalization to the aged to protect them against "the crushing economic burden of catastrophic illness." He lost but by a narrow 43-39 vote. Vermont Republican Winston Prouty wanted to raise the minimum social-security retirement benefit to $70 but lost, 79 to 12. One $500 million-a-year addition was approved, however: West Virginia Democrat Robert C. Byrd's proposal allowing workers to retire at 60 instead of 62 with two-thirds of the maximum retirement benefits. Byrd argued that something had to be done for workers in the "twilight zone," estimated that of 3,500,000 Americans now eligible to retire at 60, some 900,000 would do so.

When the original, 32-page Social Security Act was passed back in 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt figured that the Government would be paying $3.5 billion a year in benefits by 1980. As it turns out, he was slightly off; the new bill, now en route to a Senate-House conference, where most of its provisions are expected to remain intact, will boost the Government's annual social-security payments to $25 billion by 1967.

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