Clinton health plan: overview and policy implications

Clinton Healthcare

President Clinton, by no means, can be credited with being the first to suggest universal healthcare coverage for all Americans; Harry Truman called for its adoption as part of his Fair Deal, and even Lyndon Johnson brought the issue to the surface in the early days of his presidency. Yet, "By the 1992 election... more than thirty-eight million Americans lacked access to insurance (70% of them in working families making less than thirty thousand dollars a year), and concerns over healthcare had begun to surface in polls and focus groups," (Carter 114). Clinton, along with a number of others, contended that the ever-increasing costs of healthcare were rooted in the system of medicine for profit itself. In addition to the market forces that generated this situation, costs continued to increase, according to Clinton, because those uninsured with serious medical conditions lacked the benefit of early detection. Consequently, expensive and risky procedures were necessary, whereas early diagnoses could have both limited costs and saved lives. Furthermore, Clinton was interested in strengthening the Democratic Party's standing with working-class Americans by being the first to champion universal healthcare as a means towards greater equality. At the onset, the public was strongly behind the plan: "The week after Clinton introduced his health plan in September of 1993, a Gallup Poll showed the public supported his proposal nearly two to one," (Carter 115).

Ultimately, however, Clinton's healthcare plan failed because of the severe attack of the Republican Party upon it. The line of attack, whether coming from public officials or from radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, was relatively consistent: the bill was too bulks, it called for government intrusion into people's lives, it was overly bureaucratic, it limited healthcare choices substantially, and it was too similar to European-style socialist healthcare policies. After seven months of hearing these arguments made repeatedly against the plan, support significantly waned for Clinton and his proposal.

Oddly, as a number of more objective critics have pointed out, Clinton's bill was "a compromise between market-oriented and government-centered reform ideas," (Carter 116). Although Clinton was concerned with creating a national healthcare system, he was also concerned with eliminating the federal budget crisis that he had inherited. The result was that Clinton offered a stepwise approach towards a socialistic healthcare system with an initial period, at least, of allowing the market to share some of the burden of insuring so many Americans. Doubtlessly, this is not to say that Clinton's plan would necessarily have been successful; merely that the reasons for which it was attacked and subsequently defeated were largely unfounded.