President of the U.S., 1993-2001; Former Democratic Governor (AR)
1993: Advisers urged scaling back Hillary's healthcare role
In mid-August, with health care finally put on the calendar, though there was still no plan, Hillary & Bill took their first vacation in four years. Hillary used the vacation an opportunity to talk to Bill about her healthcare plans--without his economic
advisors present.
Ira Magaziner and his aides were well along in drafting the legislation, and he and Hillary had told the president that he had to make some final choices about the bill's content so it could arrive on Capital Hill when Congress
returned after Labor Day. Before leaving, the president had been besieged by advisors who continued to warn that the deficit would be in danger of exploding if he listened to Hillary. They saw the plan she was developing as too big and too costly. The
Clinton presidency would historically succeed, they advised, only if he would scale back his wife's grandiose ideas about reform and settle on a more manageable and incremental approach. Clinton had said he would make a final decision after his vacation.
Universal coverage would reduce bureaucratic costs
I was beginning to believe we [Hillary and Bill] might actually have honest debate that would produce something close to universal coverage.
The bureaucratic costs imposed by insurance companies were a big reason Americans paid more for health care but still didn't have the universal coverage that citizens in
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.555
Jun 21, 2004
Loosen eligibility for disability benefits
[As Arkansas Governor], I was upset with the Reagan administration. It had just dramatically tightened the eligibility rules for federal disability benefits. There had been abuses of the disability program, but the Reagan cure was worse than the problem.
The regulations were so strict they were ridiculous. In Arkansas, a truck driver with a ninth-grade education had lost his arm in an accident. He was denied disability benefits on the theory that he could get a desk job doing clerical work.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.313
Jun 21, 2004
1992 campaign: "It's the economy, stupid" but healthcare too
I don't think that Bill expected that health care reform would become a cornerstone of his campaign. After all, James Carville's famous war room slogan was "It's the economy, stupid." But the more Bill studied the problem, the clearer it became that
reforming health care and reining in costs were integral to fixing the economy, as well as taking care of people's urgent medical needs.
Bill and expert advisers began developing ideas about how to tackle health care. Bill previewed those plans in a
campaign book entitled Putting People First and in a speech. The reforms he outlined included controlling spiraling health care costs, reducing paperwork and insurance industry red tape, making prescriptions more affordable to those in need, and, most
important, guaranteeing that all Americans had health insurance. We knew that trying to fix the health care system would be a huge political challenge. But we believed that if voters chose Bill Clinton on Nov. 3, it meant that change was what they wanted
On May 18, 1997, the President challenged the nation to develop an AIDS vaccine within the next ten years. He also announced a number of initiatives to help meet that goal, including high-level international collaboration, a dedicated research center for
AIDS vaccine research at NIH, and outreach to scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and patient advocates to maximize the involvement of both private and public sectors in the development of an AIDS vaccine. In June 1999 the President dedicated the
Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center at the NIH and announced that the primary work of this new center will be HIV vaccine research. NIH has increased funding for AIDS vaccine research by 100 percent since the President’s challenge.
As of June 1998, researchers have evaluated 27 vaccine candidates. And in February 1999, NIH-supported investigators initiated the first AIDS vaccine trial in Africa.
Source: WhiteHouse.gov web site
May 1, 2000
Do more for health insurance
While Medicare takes care of Americans over the age of 65, we’re the only Western industrial nation that doesn’t provide a system of health insurance for all working people under 65. We worked hard to create comprehensive
health care reform early in my administration. And while that larger challenge remains unmet, we now have, thanks to bipartisan efforts, a new law that ensures that people won’t automatically lose their health insurance
when they change jobs or when somebody in the family gets sick.
But we have to do more. First, we should provide assistance to unemployed workers to help them keep their health insurance until they find a new job.
We also need to make it easier for small businesses to buy into insurance risk pools that are large enough to make it possible to offer coverage at a reasonable cost.
Clinton adopted the manifesto, "A New Agenda for the New Decade":
Promote Universal Access and Quality in Health Care That more than 40 million Americans lack health insurance is one of our society’s most glaring inequities. Lack of insurance jeopardizes the health of disadvantaged Americans and also imposes high costs on everyone else when the uninsured lack preventive care and get treatment from emergency rooms. Washington provides a tax subsidy for insurance for Americans who get coverage from their employers but offers nothing to workers who don’t have job-based coverage.
Markets alone cannot assure universal access to health coverage. Government should enable all low-income families to buy health insurance. Individuals must take responsibility for insuring themselves and their families whether or not they qualify for public assistance.
Finally, to help promote higher quality in health care for all Americans, we need reliable information on the quality of health care delivered by health plans and providers; a “patient’s bill of rights” that ensures access to medically necessary care; and a system in which private health plans compete on the basis of quality as well as cost.
Goals for 2010
Reduce the number of uninsured Americans by two-thirds through tax credits, purchasing pools, and other means.
Create a system of reliable “report cards” on the quality of care delivered by health plans and providers.
Source: The Hyde Park Declaration 00-DLC5 on Aug 1, 2000
Click here for definitions & background information on Health Care.
