Clinton health care plan of 1993
From Conservapedia
In 1993, U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration proposed a significant health care reform package. Clinton had campaigned heavily on health care in the 1992 election, and quickly set up a task force, headed by First Lady Hillary Clinton, to come up with a comprehensive plan to provide universal health care for all Americans, which was to be a cornerstone of the administration's first-term agenda.
The result, announced by President Clinton in an address to Congress on September 22, 1993, was a complex and complicated proposal running more than 1,000 pages, the core element of which was an enforced mandate for employers to provide health insurance coverage to all of their employees through competitive but closely-regulated health maintenance organizations (HMOs). The plan, often referred to as "Hillary Care" was initially well-received by liberal political leaders and socialist political commentators, and it seemed likely to pass through the Democratic-controlled Congress.
Conservatives, libertarians and the insurance industry, however, staged an effective and well-organized campaign opposing this socialized medicine plan and criticized it for the fact that it was overly bureaucratic and restrictive of patient choice. The effort included extensive advertising designed to make the public aware of the plan's problems, including the famous Harry and Louise ad, which depicted a middle-class couple despairing over the plan's bureaucratic nature. Meanwhile, Democrats, instead of uniting behind the President's original proposal, offered a number of competing plans of their own. Some criticized the plan from the left, preferring a Canadian-style single payer system.
On September 26, 1994, Senate majority leader George Mitchell announced that the plan was dead, at least for that session of Congress. The defeat weakened Clinton politically, and contributed to widespread public frustration with perceived Congressional gridlock. In the 1994 election, the Republican revolution gave the GOP control of both houses of Congress, ending prospects for a Clinton-sponsored health care overhaul. Many political commentators believe the success of the Republican Party in that election was the result of a backlash towards the Clinton Administration for the attempt to move the country more towards socialism and restrict health care choice.
