Bill Clinton's health care plan failed in large part because of a dishonest but devastating lobbying and advertising campaign financed by the health insurance industry - remember Harry and Louise? And the lesson many people took from that defeat is that any future health care proposal must buy off the insurance lobby.
But I think that's the wrong lesson. The Clinton plan actually preserved a big role for private insurers; the industry attacked it all the same. And the plan's complexity, which was largely a result of attempts to placate interest groups, made it hard to sell to the public. So I would argue that good economics is also good politics: reformers will do best with a straightforward single-payer plan, which offers maximum savings and, unlike the Clinton plan, can easily be explained....." <<<<>>>>>
most folks never heard of 'harry and louise' because most never saw ad referenced above (according to public opinion data at time)...
there was effective campaign against by portion of health insurance industry, turns out that about 50% of those insured in u.s. are covered by small/medium companies that clinton plan would have driven out of business, these companies communicated this to those they insured, two questions as i recall - do you think u.s. health care system needs to be fixed, are you dissatisfied with your health care coverage (or words to these effects)...
a lot of people apparently answered yes to first question and no to second, like 8th grade civics teachers, companies encouraged them to 'write your representative', and good number of them aparently did so...
cinton plan would have put such companies out of business because of amount of capital involved, plan would have divided country into four or five health-care 'purchasing regions', only few largest corporations could have participated, plan would have completed monopoly-capital control of health care system (which, for most of those covered, is corporate-run, for-profit, socialized system)...
no doubt, however, criticisms of 'another layer of gov't bureaucracy' required by plan played some role given so-called 'anti-statist' ('era of big government is over') politics of time... michael hoover
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