Clinton

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Wed Nov 17 07:22:30 PST 1999



>Wasn't Clinton's health care reform well intentioned at least in a limited
>sens? Admittedly it had many problems, but if one really wanted to get
>universal care then some compromises seemed necessary. A single payer
>system would have been impossible.

That's the conventional wisdom, but I think a single-payer system could have been rammed through in a well directed legislative blitzkrieg more easily than the Rube Goldberg contraption that Hillary and Ira Magaziner cobbled together in doomed effort to make nice to the insurance industry. Clinton really had Congress on the defensive when he waved that prototype National Health Insurance card in their face. He clearly had an opening for a bold move and failed to follow up.

Hillary's and Ira's hubris in this affair -- their proposal seemed designed mainly to prove how wonderfully *smart* they were -- is worse than a blunder; it's crime -- the worst offense this Administration has committed short of dropping high explosives on people. There are something like 44 million medically uninsured Americans, I believe, and there is no higher priority in this country than giving these people the assurance of adequate health care.

Carl

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