What can I say? Clinton's appointment of Ira Magaziner may have been the biggest disaster of his term. It was the only time in the Clinton administration that the Treasury got flattened when it committed its full weight to oppose somebody inside the White House. Marina Weiss, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Health Care Affairs (and conductor of the Treasury staff orchestra) wanted to do single-payer. Lloyd Bentsen wanted to do salami tactics: first kids, then the unemployed, then the uninsured, and by the end of the process you have everyone in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program...
Brad DeLong