Amid concern over steeply rising health-care costs, the top-tier Democratic presidential candidates are offering far-reaching proposals for the uninsured. In approach and structure, their proposals have striking similarities. They seek to deepen government's involvement in health care by expanding successful programs with huge infusions of federal money or by granting workers tax credits to buy health insurance. But they stop short of putting the entire health-care system under government control.
To a great degree, the proposals of the seven candidates vying for the Democratic nomination have been shaped by the collapse of former President Bill Clinton's health initiative, which set back his presidency and figured in the Democrats' loss of control of the House of Representatives in 1994. They've never recovered from the loss. Soon after Clinton took office in 1993, he promised health insurance for millions of Americans who had no coverage. But before long, the plan was a shambles, derailed by concerns that it would cost too much and create a huge new bureaucracy.
Each candidate now is proposing expansive and expensive plans to provide health coverage to almost all the 43 million Americans who are uninsured. But, mindful of the potential for a backlash, the candidates would stop short of the top-to-bottom restructuring that Clinton called for and in most instances would build on state and federal programs.
"People have not gotten over 1994 yet," Karen Pollitz, the project director for the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, said of the Clinton plan. "President Clinton tried to fix everything at once. It was not well received. And not only that -- the Democrats got turned out at the next election."
http://www.freep.com/news/politics/issue27_20040127.htm
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