As i read info about US medical care references are made to the 1994 Clinton healthcare plan but i don’t know what it is. I assume it was a universal coverage plan but i would also figure there was more to it. So what was the gist of this plan?
Omigod. The New York Times published it in full when it was first announced, and I remember reading it and disagreeing strongly with two or three points—but thinking, “overall it’s an improvement over what we have (or don’t have) now, let’s pass it and then finesse the details.”
If Googling “Clinton-Health-Care-Plan” turns up too much chaff, try logging onto the New York Times site and doing a search.
http://www.ibiblio.org/nhs/NHS-T-o-C.html
Massive group insurance, basically. Every participant would have joined an insurance “alliance,” created by his state of residence. The state would then contract with existing health insurance companies to provide coverage and manage care (states also had the option of establishing single-payer plans). Employed participants would have most of their premiums paid by employers; the unemployed would be eligible for benefits partly paid for out of taxes. The federal government would mainly set policy.
IIRC, the large insurance companies were pleased with the Clinton Health Care plan, but the smaller insurers didn’t like it. They were the ones who “poisoned the well” and depicted it as “socialized medicine” to get it defeated.
I was stationed in Germany during Clinton’s election and the subsequent move towards socialized medicine. As others who were stationed there can easily attest, we were very well insulated from the mainstream propaganda machine. Other than left-leaning (at the time) AFN radio (which would tend to support socialized medicine), all news was local.
So, I think in the GQ sense of the world, it wasn’t “small insurance companies” that poisoned the well. It was socialized medicine.
What I remember most vividly, since it directly impacted my life, was that part of the plan called for setting maximum costs for certain health equipment. At the time, I had recently gotten a modest inheritance, which (being young and extremely stupid) I had heavily invested in a risky position. I’d gotten cocky from too many successes up to that point.
The company: US Surgical. The outcome: over $80,000 lost within minutes when the market re-opened after Clinton’s announcement.
To say that I was royally pissed when the plan never even made it into a semblance of reality would be one of the great understatements of the 20th century.