Difference between revisions of "Clinton health care plan"

Revision as of 00:24, March 19, 2013

In 1993, the Clinton administration proposed a significant government-run health care reform package. Clinton had mentioned various socialized health care schemes in the 1992 election, and despite prohibitions on nepotism set up a task force headed by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, to come up with a "comprehensive plan" to enforce universal socialized health care on all Americans, which in addition to the gay agenda was a cornerstone of the administration's first-term. Various documents relating to the how the Task Force spent government funds still as of yet have not been disclosed.

The recommendation, announced by President Bill Clinton in an address to Congress on September 22, 1993, consisted largely of buzzwords and slogans developed through focus groups with a complicated proposal running more than 1,000 pages. The plan called for a mandate on job creators and employers to withhold the cost of health insurance (equal to one-eighth of GDP} from workers paychecks and funnel money to health maintenance organizations (HMOs). The plan dubbed "Hillary Care", was well-received by liberal political leaders and socialist commentators, and was promoted by mainstream media organizations as likely to pass the Democratic-controlled Congress.

As the 1994 mid-term elections approached public opinion soured on the plan because it was overly bureaucratic, expensive, inefficient and restrictive of patient's rights and free choice. The effort to bring about rejection of the legislation included minimal advertising criticizing the plan, including the famous Harry and Louise ad, which depicted a middle-class couple despairing over the plan's bureaucratic nature.

Meanwhile, Democrats headed for cover and tried to disassociated themselves from the President, offering competing plans of their own. Some liberals criticized the plan, preferring a Canadian-style single payer system.

On September 26, 1994, Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell announced that the plan was dead and did not even bother holding a vote on the bill to force Senators to go on record. The defeat weakened Clinton politically, and contributed to widespread public frustration with the remnants of New Deal socialism. In the 1994 election, the Republican revolution gave the GOP control of both houses of Congress, ending the threat of a Clinton-sponsored health care plan.

Political analysts observed the success of the Republican Party was the result of the Clinton Administration attempting to move the country towards socialism at the very moment the failures of socialism were so evident worldwide.