Did Jimmy Carter miss an opportunity for health care?

[liberalpragmatist]

I don't want to launch a "bash Jimmy Carter" thread, especially because I think on many issues Carter is underrated. But I do wonder if he should get some blame for not getting health care reform passed during HIS presidency.

Remember that we nearly got a universal health care system (though based on the private market) during the Nixon Administration. And in the second push, there was nearly a deal between Nixon, Ted Kennedy, and Rep. Wilbur Mills of Arkansas. There was a push to revive that during the Ford Administration, but that was derailed by the sudden revelation of Mills' alcoholism and womanizing, and his subsequent resignation.

Carter ran on a platform that endorsed a health plan similar to the Kennedy-Mills bills. And he came into office with MASSIVE Democratic majorities: a veto-proof Democratic majority in the House, 62 Democratic senators, plus a much more moderate, pre-Reagan Republican party. Then in office, nothing happened. I have read that late in 1979, he did reissue a comprehensive health plan but never launched a major effort to get it through Congress. And then, of course, came Reagan, and for 12 years, health care reform was dead.

I know that Ted Kennedy cited health care reform as one of the chief reasons of his falling out with Carter.

So to people who are old enough to remember Carter's presidency, does he deserve some blame? What happened that caused health care to fall off the radar?

[LiberalFighter]

1. The bunny rabbit attack?

[WI_DEM]

2. Well I guess it took Barack Obama to do something that FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, Clinton

couldn't or wouldn't do.

[DaveinMD]

3. yes

and that is a major reason that Ted Kennedy challenged Carter in the primary.

[Gman2]

4. Carter is skewered for having TOO many irons in the fire.

That is why he was supposed to suck. Too ambitious.

[theoldman]

5. Like Obama, Carter inherited a lot of problems.

Inflation may have been his biggest problem. He also had a very divided congress. The Northern Democrats fought with the Southern Democrats. That is one of the main reason he lost to Reagan. Last but not least, Carter was a very weak leader. You cannot be a nice guy and herd cats.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. Well, first he had to deal with the oil embargo, Three Mile Island, and then with the

hostage crisis - and EVERYBODY was DEMANDING he do SOMETHING about them. Kind of left everything else he was doing to die a slow death.

(Of course, IMO, Bushco was behind the embargo AND the hostage crisis - TMI was just fortuitous circumstance - and he didn't have a chance from the git go.)

[Thothmes]

7. TMI was in the last year of his term.

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. You're right - for some reason my brain always fixes it as '77 instead of

'79 - meaning it was concurrent with the hostage crisis.

If not for the hostage crisis that brought him down, I think he would have tackled HCR in his second term - he very possibly could have used TMI as a kicking off point, showing what the threat of a large scale event might be to the ad-hoc 'system' we have (I just can't really call a thousand chickens running in a thousand directions a 'healthcare system'). Two families, living next door to each other, each affected by the same event, and one family does fine, the other suffers several deaths, loss of home and jobs, etc., because of the lack of a universal healthcare system that would treat each of them equally.

[Dappleganger]

8. He didn't have the numbers nor the clout.

Sometimes being a Beltway outsider has its disadvantages.

[craigmatic]

10. Carter's problem was that he wanted to do alot at once

Health care just happened to fall behind energy and the economy. I don't think he took healthcare seriously as an issue. But it was a big lost opportunity. He was president at a time when alot of new dealers and great society people were still around. The country was still fairly receptive to liberal ideas but other things were going on. It also didn't help that he was a fiscal conservative with weak ties to the party in DC.

[unc70]

11. Kennedy motives back then were "suspect"; Southern Dems going Repub

The Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan talking points were honed during the 1976 GOP primaries and were dominating the MSM during his admin. Southern Dems were realigning (compare the states for Carter in 76 vs 80). The rising power of RW radio and direct mail fundraising (Viguere, et al) were changing the technology of elections dramatically again (TV was previous big shift, internet most recent).

Kennedy and those around him were often as much part of the problem rather than the solution. Very much the Washington establishment. Those pushing Kennedy to run against Carter often had their own agenda (Even suspect some big money interests were working to divide the Dems and give RR one last chance). Also easier for Kennedy to work with a Repub President than with one of his own party who was a rival.

Certainly, Carter being an outsider did not help things at all. The erosion of Dem control of Congress and the GOP Southern Strategy and anti-government rhetoric all made it increasingly difficult to fashion a Federal solution on much of anything.