Paul Starr, a senior adviser to the Clinton health care reform effort, wrote:
“Despite the comprehensive benefit package and the extras such as prescription drug coverage for the elderly, we did not receive passionate support from the groups we were counting on. We did succeed, however, in mobilizing the opposition. The scale of the program and its regulatory features also caused sympathetic groups in the business community and opinion leaders in the media to think twice about support for reform. Because we had failed to edit the plan down to its essentials and find familiar ways to convey it, many people couldn’t understand what we were proposing. There were too many parts, too many new ideas, even for many policy experts to keep straight….
“We made the error of trying to do too much at once, took too long, and ended up achieving nothing. Oh, yes, I was thrilled when President Clinton waved his pen before Congress and threatened to veto anything less than universal coverage. Like many others who supported reform, I failed to appreciate the risk of losing everything. We were too confident that reform was inevitable…”
The 1993-94 failure humbled the Clinton White House to the point that it became one of the least threatening presidencies of the modern era. Let’s hope history repeats itself to the end of this reform attempt too.
