Clinton Has Learned Her Health Care Lesson
It seems that Hillary Clinton has learned from the health care debacle in the 1990s:
As first lady in the early 1990s, she tried to reshape the nation’s health care system — an audacious effort that collapsed under its own complexity, Republican opposition and the Clintons’ unwillingness to seek compromise with lawmakers.
“I still have the scars to show for it,” she tells voters now, promising a more consensus-based approach to health care reform if she is elected president…
Burned by the experience, Sen. Clinton has since adopted what she calls “the school of small steps.”
Aides say her plan will be rolled out through a series of speeches focusing on different aspects of health care reform, with the topic of universal coverage to be tackled last.
She began last month with a speech on reducing health care costs. Among other things, she called for enhanced computerized medical record-keeping and encouraging insurance companies and providers to emphasize prevention of illness, rather than treatment.
Her second address, on improving health care quality, will come later this summer.
Of course, her consensus-based approach does not make her more popular among quite some Democrats. Edwards and Obama have both come up with far more bold proposals “which have been generally praised by activists.”
On the other hand, her approach might mean that she will be able to draw from the different existing plans – use the strong points from the other plans, getting rid of the weak ones – and by doing so, she might be able to come up with the best plan that stands a change of actually succeeding / being approved and implemented.
6 Responses to “Clinton Has Learned Her Health Care Lesson”
As someone who reported on Hillary’s abortive 1993 initiative full time, I am gratified that she has gotten religion.
Unfortunately, no matter the size of a Democratic majority and even with a Democrat in the White House, experience tells me that meaningful health-care reform will not happen.
It is, as usual, all about the money, and the health care, health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies are enormously powerful. Any meaningful reform would have to take on all three, and that just ain’t gonna happen.
Shaun, don’t worry. Hillary Clinton will lurch leftward after she is elected (she’s playing it quiet now so as not to repel swing voters). The current plans of the most extreme Democrats on health care, Conyers and Kucinich, actually constitute something close to what most Americans who want government intervention envision — namely expanding Medicare to more beneficiaries, ideally everybody. The problem is finding the money to pay the costs (including compensation for lost profits over 20-30 years if health care is forcibly converted to non-profit only, an unconstitutional defect and intentional plan for theft in the current Conyers plan).
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Yes, Hillary learned her political lessons.
Unfortuantely, that means that, so far, she is proposing band aids instead of meaningful reform.
It’s tragic to think that this is the optimum we can hope for.
Hillary Clinton’s voting record on health care can be found at: Hillary Clinton’s Voting Record
Hillary Clinton’s history of speeches on health care can be found at: Hillary Clinton’s Record of Speeches
Hillary Clinton’s ratings from special interest groups on health care can be found at: Hillary Clinton’s Interest Group Ratings
For more information on Hillary Clinton’s position on health care please visit Project Vote Smart or call our hotline at 1-888-VOTE-SMART.
It’s not the best, or the most. She’s taking it easy before the election so as not to frighten swing voters by being too far to the left. (For this election that is forthcoming, she can receive HMO and other special-interest money if she doesn’t appear to be threatening to end their bountiful livelihoods — “I’m safer and saner than Obama or Edwards” [sic].)
Just wait until after she’s elected.
There is no way she’s going to try the same fascistic HMO-”alliance”-based scheme that was the main driving force behind the 1994 election results. It makes more sense to expand Medicare, which already exists and has something of a sacred-cow status already among some in this country. This is likely what she’ll do once she has determined how to pay for it. I don’t know if she’ll still attempt the age-related “pincer” first (offering Medicare for all children, i.e., minors, first rather than to everyone) or if she’ll proceed with trying to offer it to everyone, but enlarging the scope of Medicare is obviously the thing for her to do after 2008 and what most people are anticipating if not expecting or demanding.