Remember Clinton's health care plan?

[Deaniac20]

I honestly think the only sole reason for its demise and the so-called "Republican Revolution" was because of the Whitewater stoty. I have come to this conclusion after reading most of his book. And if you look back, they did go after him EVERY DAY of the week, and Newt Gingrich was criticizing him everyday because of it. His plan was to just make corporations provide Healthcare. This woulda been GREAT for America because it would not have slowed down deficit cutting, and and saved the middle class. I DO think Hillary hurt the project, and it woulda had a better shot without her there because it was more Contract with America fodder and newsmedia coverage. it coulda used better organizing, but i think Whitewater sunk it.

[aquart]

1. No, it actually sucked.

The government needs to provide the healthcare independent of jobs held. Healthcare needs to be seamless and permanent.

Hillary's attempt to satisfy everybody was a disaster that actually deserved to fail.

However, if you mean that we should properly tax corporations and excessive wealth in order to guarantee healthcare, well that's fine.

But George has guaranteed it won't happen in my lifetime. Good luck in yours.

May he never sleep.

[Deaniac20]

3. exactly what lost us congress

Well it was because of Hillary. But perhaps if all Dems including you had been united we woulda won

[bemildred]

4. It was supposed to suck.

It was no accident that it sucked and sank like a stone and was
never brought up again. He needed it to win, he didn't need it to
rule.

[Warpy]

6. Agreed, it was a lousy plan that left the main problem in place

Anything that keeps for-profit insurance companies in the mix in any fashion is doomed to fail. Insurance companies will ALWAYS find ways to eliminate the sickest people from their rolls or simply to deny them appropriate care in a timely fashion without making already sick and weakened people fight for everything they get.

Managed care looked great on paper, but we can all now see what putting bean counters in charge of medical care has done.

Only a single payer system will work, and it will be a great system if done state by state or regionally, with minimum standards set federally.

[iverglas]

17. "state by state" in Canada

What USAmericans may not realize is that this is exactly how universal single public payer health care came to Canada.

Tommy Douglas* was the premier** of Saskatchewan.

* grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland, I always like to point out just to provide a reference point for furriners ;)
** governor equivalent ... and Law and Order and its perennial Canadian caricatures notwithstanding, it's pronounced prEE-myeer, not pri-mYAIr

http://www.weyburnreview.com/tommydouglas/welcome.html
video clips to look at here: http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-73-90/politics_economy/medicare/

http://www.cbc.ca/lifeandtimes/douglas.html

Before Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas, illness in Canada meant debt and hardship for many families. As Saskatchewan premier, Douglas led the country with hospital insurance in 1947 and pioneered medicare in 1961. Today Douglas’ policy, more than any other single political act, has become a central part of the Canadian identity.

(It's helpful to have a compelling and charismatic personality like Tommy leading the battle; he was recently voted The Greatest Canadian in a CBC television series/viewer vote.)

Actually, medicare came first to a town in Saskatchewan, even before it was adopted in the UK:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/169/1/50

He fought a pitched battle with the medical profession, and soon won -- as did the doctors, as they soon realized.

One thing the Saskatchewan experience points out is that things can be done in stages: hospital insurance first, broader health care insurance second, e.g.

Universal medicare was adopted as a nation-wide program in Canada in 1967. But it is still run the way you propose: each province has its own plan, "with minimum standards set federally". The Canada Health Act guarantees, and requires:

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/medicare/chaover.htm

1. public administration
2. comprehensiveness
3. universality
4. portability
5. accessibility

"Portability" comes once all jurisdictions have a plan in place and there is a national set of standards, of course.

I can never seem to find out what's up with the single public payer plan that Maine is supposed to be adopting, after voting to do so a couple of years ago. California voted on a public payer plan in 1994:
http://votehealth.net/about/past.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8764388&dopt=Abstract

Proposition 186 was an initiative on the November 1994 California ballot which proposed to establish a state single-payer health care program. Although Prop 186 was overwhelmingly defeated in the November 1994 election (73% No, 27% Yes), it accomplished many things. Model legislation was developed showing the feasibility of a specific single-payer program for California. It was placed on the ballot by an unprecedented volunteer signature-gathering effort and was the largest grassroots political campaign fund-raising effort in California history. A novel strategy for the discussion of complex issues through 1500 house parties was launched. Prop 186 was defeated by an insurance industry-led coalition with an anti-government message. Lessons for future efforts include increasing the size and duration of the grassroots organizing and educational effort, and decreasing reliance on conventional political campaign tactics and the mainstream media.

My understanding of the defeat of the proposition was that a campaign (obviously orchestrated by corporate insurance/healthcare interests) was successfully waged to cast the initiative as abortion-related, and thus to divide and conquer. Hmm ... this seems to be a very interesting article on what happened, and I highly recommend it for information on the issues, even if disagreement on how to approach them is not easily resolved:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3745/is_199701/ai_n8737640

One might have expected women's organizations to endorse Prop. 186 with enthusiasm. According to a 1993 study conducted by the California Elected Women's Association for Education and Research, in 1989 at least 1.7 million, or 17 percent, of California women ages 18-64 had no health insurance of any sort. ...

... With such considerations in mind, women's organizations did indeed endorse Prop. 186. By summer 1994, California NOW, the League of Women Voters, the Older Women's League, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom had all signed on. But in August, California NOW withdrew its endorsement. And in September the National Women's Political Caucus-Los Angeles (NWPC-L.A.) declared its outright opposition.

... Among the groups whose "participation in our campaign" West welcomed were two unlikely political bedfellows-the California Catholic Conference and NWPCL.A. The No on 186 press release also noted that the National Organization for Women had repealed its endorsement of the initiative. The implication was clear: if both the Catholic Church and pro-choice women opposed this measure, who could possibly support it?

... California feminists who did not support Proposition 186 charge that the initiative failed to protect reproductive rights. The word "abortion," they note, appeared nowhere in the text of the California Health Security Act. Though Article 2, Medical Benefits, stated that "all medical care determined to be medically appropriate by the patient's health care provider" would be covered, the closest the document came to mentioning reproductive rights was to specify coverage for "prenatal, perinatal, and maternity care." For the pro-choice community, that was not close enough. ...

Can a health care plan cover prenatal care first, and abortion later? (The article also alludes to the problem of undocumented immigrants.) Hard-line as I am on reproductive rights, I think I agree with the analysis that defeating Proposition 186, even if it did not propose a plan that covered abortion, was not in women's interests.

Anyhow -- the point. Universal health care can be introduced in stages: in some jurisdictions first, to cover some services first.

It's one of those areas where my outsider's view would be that you guys should act locally a little more. ;)

[Princess Turandot]

10. It worse than just sucked..

I think it also gave the HMOs a bigger boost as the 'best' interim solution for healthcare. It wasn't until the early-mid 1990's that HMOs showed up in New York with any presence, as an example. I think the other bad thing her project did was create the notion that a single payor system run by the government would never be effective, since after all, it couldn't produce a model that most people could understand. And most importantly, it didn't take on the insurance companies which has to be point 1 in any reform.


I was doing hospital fiscal work when the plan came out, and the first pamphlet I received on the proposed plan (from my former large CPA firm employer) had to resort to a fold-out drawing with venn diagrams, arrows, circles, what have you. Looked like it had been prepared by someone on acid. In the end, what it primarily did IIRC was create 'buying groups' for people to join to buy lower rate insurance, creating artificial group plans.

I wonder if anyone has ever taken the total $$ paid by corporations for healthcare for their employees,total Medicaid and Medicare spending and determined how much more $$ would even be needed once you eliminate the insurance company middlemen. There's no reason why corporations could not continue to 'buy' insurance, but from the government. A single payor system would also better insure that all money owed actually got to providers. The payment methodologies in NYS are so varied that no hospital could possibly collect all $$ owed to it, such as when one private insurance company has 17 different products all of which have slight but important differences regarding billing. No electronic billing system is capable of billing for 100's of different plans, w/o a lot of human intervention. Even better are the Medicaid HMOs which sprung into existence with a vengeance over the last 10 years, where the fact that patients still went to their local ER, even if it was one that the Medicaid HMO didn't contract with, just let them hold onto their money.

In NYS at least, the 2 government programs, Medicaid and Medicare are much more streamlined from a billing/payment system, largely because as payment entities, they see their responsibility as processing proper claims, not figuring out how to not pay claims. People may complain about their rates, but all I know is that if you billed Medicaid this week for an inpatient claim, it showed up on the Wednesday 2 weeks later.

But in the end, no one will be willing to pull the insurance companies out of the process.

[Dr Ron]

11. Agree--Clinton's plan sucked due to excessive use of HMO's

among other problems.

Sure the Republicans shot it down, but Clinton gave them a real easy target.

[ibid]

12. Hillary pushed for Nat'l single payer heath. Bill bought the Ins company's

promise of support if he had Hillary do the HMO version.

It was the second time the inssurance companies have promised and lied reguarding National single payer Health - they did it to Nixon in 72/73.

IMHO the final Hillary care appeared to be "a disaster that actually deserved to fail" because the insurance companies designed it as such so as to fit the Harry and Louise commercials they were filming as they told Bill they supported the plan. In reality it was actually less costly and less complicate than what we had in 93 and indeed better than the HMO/PPO system we ended up with.

But it was not single payer national health.

Senator Hatch's offer of under 18 universal with over 55 Medicare buy in at that time back in 93 should have been agreed to by Bill - but the insurance companies convinced him he could do better.

[Coastie for Truth]

13. The problem is

and its leadership including .

The absence of single payer system is driving American industry offshore per GM Chairman Rick Waggoner.

[ibid]

14. True - Frist was not part of the 93 discussion - but HCA and the casualty

and other insurance company orgs co-ordinated the betrayal of the promises being made by their lobbyists to Bill Clinton about support for Hillarycare and fierce opposition to singlepayer if he did not listen to them.

I am always amazed by the lack of ethics of the casualty insurance companies

Then I am amazed that the life insurance companies which have great ethical standards are so willing to work with the casualty folks in all things political.

[Coastie for Truth]

16. You know the two business models of the casualty and health insurers

1. Take your money, invest it, make you sue them when a covered event happens.

2. Privatize profits -- socialize risk.

As is perfectly clear from how they asked the government to bail them out on flood insurance, earthquake insurance, kidney dialysis, Price-Anderson. Not sure what's happening with hurricane and "war risk" insurance.

[Conservativesux]

18. Millions more people will be without health insurance in a few years

as we lose more and more jobs overseas.

Thanks for nothing *!

[xray s]

2. hte Whitewater stoty had nuthin to do with it

Everyone nose its because Hitlery eats kittens for breakfist. And Jesus hates socialized commie pinko health insurance.

[USAcitizen]

5. The republicans won

They launched an all out war to discredit anything Clinton. It worked because AMERICANS ARE STUPID!

[adamd]

7. actually

Actually a lot of it had to do with both sides of Congress not wanting to pass it. With the Republican majority at the time, the piece of legislation became so watered down (not that it was great to begin with) that a great deal of its key backers lost faith.

[Coastie for Truth]

8. We lost that battle because of INSURANCE MONEY - BIG TIME

And MISTER (He's no doctor) Frist and Insurance Mafia Lobbyist Karen Ignagni and BIG INSURANCE -- BIG MAFIA -- BIG MONEY -- BIG TIME (Remember the "Harry and Louise" Infomercials - the predecessors of the "Swift Boat Veterans" Big Lie). And the sheeple buy that Big Money crap - even knocked out Wofford and put Rick (Pope Rickie I) Santorum in the Senate.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. No mainstream Dem has ever proposed real national healthcare

at least not the ones who can get media attention.

Kucinich proposed a national healthcare plan, which was probably one reason why he couldn't get media coverage.

[ibid]

15. Hillary pushed for national health - but behind the scene - only scared

the lobbyist crowd and got mentioned in their reports to the insurance companies (how to stop Hillary! :-) ).