Nightly News
| May 23, 2012
From the Archives: President Reagan invokes Katie Beckett
November 10, 1981: Katie Beckett has died. Her case led to disabled children being allowed to live at home. During a question and answer session after a news conference that focused on the economy, President Ronald Reagan responded to a question from NBC’s Andrea Mitchell about proposed entitlement cuts. The President invoked the case of Katie Beckett, a 3 year old hospitalized almost since birth whose family wanted to care for her at home, as an example of irrational federal regulation that needed to be “corrected.”