Assignment:
Re-write(7 pages) already written healthcare reform paper in your own words:
THE HEALTHCARE PLAN OF CLINTON
Clinton's Healthcare Plan: the Reasons Why It Failed
In the United States the issue of government funded healthcare programs has always been one of importance drawing attentions of many and involving myriads of debate sessions. Still now people take quite interest in dissecting and finally commenting on why Obamacare is a success and why Clintoncare/Hillarycare was not. But whatever may be the reason behind such indulgence, it must be analyzed why such a welfare effort like President Clinton's healthcare plan ultimately failed even though having some great features which, if implemented properly, would have changed the course of healthcare policies in the United States for a considerable period of time. Moreover, it must be argued that if the key players and the key interest groups would have behaved in a different manner, Clinton's healthcare program/policy would have been achieved success through some alterations and amendments.
Prior to the election of Bill Clinton as the President of the United States, the nation was suffering from some major setbacks in the realm of healthcare policies. During the end phases of the 20th century "the United States enjoyed the dubious distinction of having the highest health care costs in the world while being the only major democracy with a substantial fraction of the population still lacking basic medical insurance" (Bok, 1998). Due to such reasons the nation started witnessing the emergence of specific key players urging to usher a change in the sphere of healthcare reforms. Congress, as one of the key players, was seriously considering plans to provide universal health coverage on one hand, and physicians, big businesses, and Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, as various interest groups opposing the Congress, were more interested in blocking the proposals of the Congress (Bok, 1998). The situation was a dilemmatic one and some reformation was needed.
Clinton felt the nerve of the majority of the populace who were in favor of healthcare reform and hence, he made healthcare a primary weapon in his election campaigns. With his win the issue of healthcare reform came to forefront. It must be noted that gradually American businesses were singing in the tune of Clinton due to the fear of losing further businesses due to their disadvantageous position fueled by the rising health costs in the United States and "Growing segments of the medical community expresses a desire to consider reforms; even hospitals seemed interested in some scheme that would spare them the heavy burden of giving free medical care to the uninsured" (Bok, 1998). Moreover, Clinton was obliged to introduce a healthcare reform policy also due to the fact that "large majorities of the public rated health care reform among the most urgent problems facing the nation and voiced support for a plan that would provide medical insurance for all Americans" (Bok, 1998).
After getting elected as the President of the United States, Bill Clinton kept his word and in early 1993 he declared the formation and assembling of a task force of experts to review the subject of health care and to formulate and propose a health care plan to the Congress (Bok, 1998). It was again Clinton who named his wife, Hillary as the head of the task force. Finally, after few months, the task force headed by Hillary Clinton produced its 1000 paged report. The contents of the report did bear the mark of a genuine effort to gift the American populace with a health care reform policy meant for the wellbeing for the majority. The huge report encompassed several jubilant aspects like the proposition of coverage from the employers, "financed by payroll taxes and delivered through carefully regulated competition among large non-profit health maintenance organizations, such as the Kaiser Plan and Blue Cross, or for-profit prepaid plans of the kind that were springing up across the country" (Bok, 1998). It must be noted that the healthcare reform plan initiated by Clinton, if would have been supported by the oppositions, could have paved the way for the emergence of the golden era of U.S. health care reformation, but the deliberate opposition of key players and specific interest groups coupled by some wrong calculations of the President's advisory body, hindered such an opportunity to get transformed into reality.
The health care reform plan initiated by Clinton almost had all such factors that were necessary to implement an effective and widely accepted health care policy for the American citizenry. It must be noted that in the report submitted by the task force headed by Hillary "Besides universal coverage and a basic benefit package, provisions included health insurance reform, regional alliances for structuring competition among health insurance plans, consumer choice of health plans, and provisions for Medicaid beneficiaries" (Plaut & Arons, 1994). Apart from such propositions, the health care reform plan of Clinton also included mental health and substance abuse provision encompassing "coverage of intensive nonresidential services, medical management, evaluation and assessment services, and case management" (Plaut & Arons, 1994). Moreover, integration of public mental health and substance abuse services into the complete range of health services that could be offered by local health plans was also a priority issue enlisted in the health reform plan of Clinton (Plaut & Arons, 1994).
But despite of having all such promising clauses, after much deliberation finally after a year of myriads of committee hearings, negotiations, reports, trial balloons, and arguments, on September 26, 1994, Senate Leader George Mitchell announced the death of the health care legislation proposed by Clinton at least for that particular session of Congress (Bok, 1998). But if the death of Clinton's health care reformation plan can be dissected several interplaying factors might come to forefront indicating the role of key players whose apathy towards the introduction of a proper formulated health care plan ultimately brought about the demise of the plan itself. It should be noted that the much publicized promises made by Clinton in respect of health care reform failed to get reflected even in a limited amount and this did spread fear and ambiguities in the minds of the innumerable citizens of the United States. One must take the note of the fact that the naïve attitude of Bill Clinton and his advisers which forced them to think that managed competition would appear moderate to the moderates and liberal to the liberals contributed to the failure of the health reform, and moreover, Clinton's time-investment in the North American Free Trade Agreement also enhanced doubts within the minds of the U.S. populace and the members of the Senate about the feasibility of the practical implementation of the clauses mentioned in the health care reform plan (Brady & Kessler, 2010).
Analysis of the issues that ultimately brought an end to the decline of the health care reform plan of Clinton can also reveal how, from an institutionalist perspective, "the fragmented and federated political system in the United States gives enormous power to focused interest groups, which in turn inhibits large-scale change like health reform, even if such change were favored by a majority" (Brady & Kessler, 2010). Furthermore, the Cooper and Chafee plans also played their respective roles in bringing the downfall of the health reform plan. It is to be noted that "While rejecting an employer mandate, the Cooper and Chafee plans included no other source of revenue capable of financing the broadened coverage each called for" (Starr, 1994). This was a setback which put the reform plan partially at stake. Again, apart from the partisan political environment the failure of the interest groups in support of and in opposition to the reformation in truly educating the masses also contributed to the death of the proposed health care reform plan of Clinton. In this regard it can be said that "Interest groups spent large sums communicating with the public, but most of these efforts seemed designed less to inform than to arouse latent fears and anxieties" (Bok, 1998). Also, it is noteworthy that the skepticism in the minds of many Americans regarding government intervention in the domain of health care and the relation of such intervention with the squandering of large amounts of money also prohibited the plan from turning into an Act (Bok, 1998).
Hence, in conclusion, it can be said that if the key players and the key interest groups would have behaved in a different manner, Clinton's healthcare program/policy would have been achieved success through some alterations and amendments. It must be noted that the healthcare reform plan initiated by Clinton, if would have been supported by the oppositions, could have paved the way for the emergence of the golden era of U.S. health care reformation, but the deliberate opposition of key players and specific interest groups coupled by some wrong calculations of the President's advisory body, hindered such an opportunity to get transformed into reality.
References:
Bok, D. (1998). "The Great Health Care Debate of 1993-94 ". Public Talk: online journal of discourse leadership.
Brady, D.W, and Kessler, D.P. (2010). Why Is Health Reform So Difficult? Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 35(2): 161-175. Retrieved March 8, 2015, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3195449/
Plaut, T.F, and Arons, B.S. (1994). President Clinton's proposal for health care reform: key provisions and issues. Hospital Community Psychiatry, 45(9):871-876. Retrieved March 8, 2015, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7989016
Starr, P. (1994). What Happened to Health Care Reform? The American Prospect, 20:20-31.