Former President Clinton Says He Should Get More Blame Than His Wife For Failed Attempt To Overhaul U.S. Health Care System In 1990s

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 12 Nov 2007 - 7:00 PDT

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Former President Bill Clinton, husband of presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), on Thursday during a speech in Glenwood, Iowa, said his wife has "taken the rap for some of the problems" that his administration had with efforts to implement health care reform during the 1990s, although those issues "were far more my fault than hers," the AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

Bill Clinton said that efforts to implement health care reform failed during the 1990s because of a lack of funds and opposition in Congress. He said, "We told her she had to get to universal coverage and there would be no new money. She had to figure out how to do it." In addition, he said, "This time, when you let the tax cuts for upper-income people expire, it'll create a pool of money that wasn't there last time" (AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune, 11/8).

In response to the comments from Bill Clinton, presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said that Hillary Clinton has accepted credit for efforts to implement health care reform during the 1990s and also must accept responsibility for the failure of the efforts. Obama said, "All I know is that part of the record she's running on is having worked on health care, so it's kind of hard to gauge if one of her claims is to have experience in this issue to then suggest that somehow she doesn't have anything to do with the fact that it didn't work" (Zeleny, New York Times, 11/9).

Carmona Discusses Need To Focus on Preventive Care
Former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona on Thursday in an interview with the Des Moines Register said that voters should ask presidential candidates for specific proposals to prevent chronic diseases. Carmona, who visited Iowa on behalf of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, said that candidates in large part have focused on expansion of health insurance to cover the cost of care for sick individuals. "That's all great, but it's a shell game," he said. According to Carmona, treatment of chronic diseases currently accounts for about three-fourths of U.S. health care spending (Leys, Des Moines Register, 11/9).

Opinion Piece Addresses Giuliani Ad
An advertisement recently launched by presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) that claims his "chances of surviving prostate cancer would have plummeted" had he received care in Britain sent the "advocates of universal health care into a hair-pulling frenzy," but, after "the dust settled, it was clear that for most cancers, including prostate, Giuliani was right," columnist Steve Huntley writes in the Chicago Sun-Times.

According to Huntley, the "Giuliani numbers hold up" based on the results of a Eurocare study of cancer survival rates in 21 European nations. Huntley acknowledges that "major gaps in our health care safety net exist" and that "employer-based insurance is a relic of World War II that fuels inflation in medical costs."

However, he writes, rather than a "big government" solution to problems with the health care system, the U.S. should implement a "free-market approach" that empowers "individuals to handle their own health insurance." He concludes, "Government programs just don't provide the flexibility to respond to innovation" (Huntley, Chicago Sun-Times, 11/8).

Broadcast Coverage
MSNBC's "Live with Dan Abrams" on Thursday included a discussion with Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post and political analyst Pat Buchanan about Bill Clinton's comments (Abrams, "Live with Dan Abrams," MSNBC, 11/9). Video of the segment is available online.

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