Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

HillaryCare rehabilitated

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Jonathan Cohn has a nice rehabilitation of the 1993 Clinton health care plan, noting that we’re still dealing with the same old problems 12 years on, only worse: Costs, the uninsured, total lack of transparency, yadda yadda yadda.

Look, I think it’s silly and a red herring to think that the Clinton health care plan died because of its inherent flaws, its length, Hillary’s alleged abrasiveness and self-righteousness, whatever. No, it died because the special interests — the insurers — lined up against it, spent a lot of money fighting it, ran ads all over the country, faked up some “protests”, and most importantly, persuaded the Republicans that their own electoral interests would be shattered for decades to come if they didn’t kill it. In other words, they feared that people would come to like universal health care so much, that they would vote for the party that gave it to them — much like Social Security and Medicare have created generations of Democrats.

It was a special-interest,  big-money coup. Nothing more, nothing less. And when the next (Democratic) President’s universal health care plan comes out, the usual suspects will do the usual things. Count on it.

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Comments

  1. Louise:  “This 1500-page health care bill is awfully complicated…”

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    Harry:  “Wait ’til you get to the part where government bureaucracy stormtroopers load us into boxcars and haul us all off to HMO concentration camps…”

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    …or something like that.

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    I thought AARP’s rollover on the prescription drug bill was a head-scratcher until I found out that AARP president William Novelli founded Porter/Novelli, who produced the “Louise and Harry” ads.

    A former P.R. executive, Novelli specialized in using “social marketing” as a cover for corporate interests. On its own site, the company he founded boasts about its pioneering work on behalf of manufacturing polluters, the auto industry, the insurance industry and other special interests. Porter/Novelli now seems especially proud of the grossly misleading “Harry and Louise” ad that brought down the Clinton healthcare plan in 1993. source

  2. I liked the HillaryCare plan but I don’t think it was all the negative advertising that killed. THey screwed it up. Bill and Hillary did not come in with a plan. They came in with a committee to create one. Kennedy had a bill in the Senate which, had they adopted it and pushed it in the first few weeks after he got in, would have passed. It would have had flaws but if we had established the principle, we could have fixed it later. Instead, as a friend of mine who served on one of the committees that was to write the plan noted, we had a mess and gave the opposition time to organize. I really hope that she learned something.

  4. Dear Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) Colleagues and Friends,

    We have an extraordinary opportunity in the next few weeks to raise the visibility the health care crisis and to educate the public about the single payer solution. To participate in this campaign, click here.

    Michael Moore has invited PNHP and its allies to use the release of his new movie, “Sicko” – which will bring the case for single payer reform to millions of viewers – as a platform to organize for national health insurance.

    PNHP is developing a national campaign to build on this high profile opportunity. We view this as the opening salvo of a stepped up effort to ensure that single payer has a prominent position in the run-up to the November, 2008 election….

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    After the past 20 years working alongside others trying to create a just and humane healthcare system, and watching our democracy become more and more broken as we get ripped off more and more, it is clear that this issue demands that the people lead.

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    Maybe then the politicians will follow — joining Jamie Eldridge, Barney Frank and a few other brave souls who are champions of streamlined single payer universal healthcare! đŸ™‚

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