Affordable Healthcare for All: President Clinton's 1993 Plan - Essay Sample

Introduction

Access to quality healthcare is considered as one of the basic necessities of human's healthy life. The health care plan has been politicized and it is a synonymous topic in every campaign period in America. The purpose of the healthcare plan is to bring a better healthcare plan that will equally support better healthcare services for all Americans, making the system efficient and affordable. In 1993, President Bill Clinton worked towards the health care plan in close collaboration with the First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton; it was titled the Clinton-Care of 1993. As the cornerstone of Clinton's administration in the first-term, the aim was to construct the comprehensive plan that offers universal health care for all the Americans. However, despite the effort induced towards the development of the health plan, still, some controversies were raised which led to the unsuccessful implementation of the Clinton-Care Plan.

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Clinton-Care Plan Was Campaign's Top Agenda

Top in agenda before the 1992 presidential election was improving the health care. In the night of September 22nd, 1993, President Bill Clinton presented a rousing speech before the US Congress, he rallied that "America to fix a health care system that is badly broken.... giving every American health security-health care that's always there, health care that can never be taken away" (Pear, Toner, & Clymer, 1994). Clinton proposed a compulsory directive for employers to offer health insurance coverage to their entire employee. The speech rejuvenated the hearts of many American people especially because of the challenges that most of them had encountered in the healthcare system. The speech was followed with polls period, which was characterized by the high support of the registered voters. The headlines on the New York Times bolded with "The Clinton Plan Is Alive on Arrival," as moderate Republicans and leaders of the groups with a stake in the health care system expressed their commitment in working out reforms (Pear, Toner, & Clymer, 1994).

Features of the Clinton's Healthcare Plan

As cited by Plaut and Arons (1994), Clinton's administration basis was to develop a comprehensive plan to offer universal health care coverage for all Americans. Also, it was intended to offer the basic benefit package, provisions incorporating the health insurance reform, regional alliances for cooperation, consumer choice of health plans, health insurance plans, as well as the provision for Medicaid beneficiaries. It also comprised of a proposed substance abuse and mental health provisions coverage of intensive non-residential services, evaluation and assessment services, medical management and case management. The Clinton-Care Plan advocated for the unification of substance abuse and public health mental health services into the full health services coverage to the local health plans. The health care issue that was aimed to be resolved if the Clinton Health Plan had been accepted and enacted was to determine whether the regional alliance needs to be obligatory and if the employees are needed to subsidize to the insurance premium.

The Clinton-Care Plan aimed at lowering the government's rising health care costs. Different researches by Khan (2009) and Kramer (1994) showed that it was realized that the health care reform was essential at cutting the budget, whereby the Medicaid and Medicare took the bigger fraction of the healthcare budget. The Healthcare Plan entailed the managed competition approach to attain its objective. Similarly, the government aimed at regulating the cost of the insurance premiums as well as the doctor bills. Kramer (1994) affirms that this forced the health care insurance companies to strive at offering the lower and best cost package to individuals and companies. Khan (2009) states that this plan had differed with Medicare whereby the government contracts directly with hospitals, doctors, together with the rest of the health providers. Medicare is also termed as the single-payer system. The Clinton-care proposal was to strategize its key goals based on the three features of regional health alliances, universal coverage, and a national health board. The proposal by the Clinton-Care Plan was to unify the Medicare recipient into the conventional health system. Also, the plan was to cut Medicaid and Medicare expenses by cutting payments to hospitals and doctors (Khan, 2009).

The Influence of the Various Interest Groups and Governmental Entities During this Process

As summarised in the article by Amadeo (2019), after the mentioning of the health care reforms during his campaign pledges, in 1993, President Clinton appointed Hilary Clinton (the first lady) together with her advisor Ira Magaziner, to chair the Task Force on National Health Care Reform which was made up of 50 members. Although, in February the same year, the Task Force faced resistance from the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons who had petitioned a lawsuit to stop the development of the bill insisting that the proceedings by the Task Force were too private. The same year in May, Hilary presented the plan to the 52 senators, but the republican felt that they were not included in the development of the bill especially when it had gone too far, this triggered the dissolving of the Task Force. In June the same year, during the centenary celebration of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Hillary took the opportunity to meet the 600 doctors with the intention of having them to promote the health reform plan (Amadeo, 2019). On September the same year, President Clinton made a formal presentation of the plan during the speech of Congress. But, in October the same year, "Harry & Louise" ads explained to the constituent how the Hillarycare was complex to be implemented (Clintonlibrary42, 2014). Similar year, in November, Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell introduced before the Congress S.1757 (103rd): Health Security Act. While in December of the same year, President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, something that agitated the unions more and weakening their support for Hillarycare. On September 26th, 1994, Senator Mitchell stated that the health care reform proposal dead. In January 1998 would have been the end of the grace period in case the bill had been passed for the state to establish the regional health alliances. If the bill had been based, on 2003 employees would be paying the income taxes on any health benefits that go beyond the standard package (Amadeo, 2019).

Criticism That Led to the Defeated of the Clinton-Health Plan

After appearing severally before the Congress Committee on health care, Hillary Clinton presentation on different proposals on how to improve the health care system aroused different criticism from different stakeholders and interested parties. The critics of the bill had prepared themselves against it even before November 20th, 1993, when it was presented before the Democratic-influenced Congress. First of all, the proposal was cited to be a complex one as it comprised of more than 1000 pages, the main idea being making it obligatory from the employers to offer health care insurance coverage to all their employees, something that was not welcomed by many of the interested parties. The campaign against the bill was led by the William Kristol, together with his policy group Project for the Republican Future, which was synonymous with the coordinating the plan's defeat through a sequence of now renowned "policy memos" faxed to Republican leaders. Interestingly, Congress was curious about the benefits associated with the new plan; they perceived that it will introduce more budget deficit (Navarro, 2007).

In addition, the Libertarians, Conservatives, together with the health insurance industry propelled their advocacy against the plan, citing that is being restrictive to patient choice and overly bureaucratic. According to the Heritage Foundation, the Clinton Administration through its health plan was intending to impose the top-down, 'command-and-control system of global budget' and premium caps. The campaign extended to an advertisement that criticized the plan, such as the famed "Harry and Louise' and sponsored by the Health Insurance Association of America. The advert featured the middle-class couple being hopeless over the plan's complexity and bureaucratic nature. The print media platform was not left behind, Christian Science Monitor, Time, CBS News, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal, took center stage to introduced articles that questioned whether there was an existing healthcare crisis (Navarro, 2007).

Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave his sentiments quoting that 'there is no health care crisis.' He further added that "there is an insurance crisis" but also indicated "anyone who thinks (the Clinton Administration) can work in the real world as presently written isn't living in it" (Kramer, 1994).

The health care plan targeted at giving the insurer control over the health care providers, having doctors working in group practices known as the Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). The doctors' were worried about being forced into HMOs since they could lose control over pricing, treatment, and care (Navarro, 2007).

Clinton's administration made a blunder when the President signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was referred to the death certificate to the country's health reform. The agreement was against the will of the labor union as it adversely affected the country's economy. Low-cost products from Mexico started coming in and many members in the manufacturing industry lost their job, making it impossible for the local employers to consider the effectiveness and application of Clinton's health Plan (Navarro, 2007).

Take Position

Clinton Health plan idea had more disadvantages than advantages, mostly because it was much politicized and lacked the support of the main stakeholders. It is indeed known that most of the American's expenses were directed more to health care; hence their expectation was to have a health plan that was efficient and reduce the deficit in the budget. First, the Clinton-Care Plan was less of universal coverage; it was majorly aiming the employed individuals, at a time when many of the Americans lacked reliable healthcare insurance. On the other hand, the Health care coverage for the employees is essential, but Clinton's administration should have favored the manufacturers and promote their business so that they could be in a position to offer health insurance to their employees, rather than frustrating them by signing NAFTA. The idea of making insurance cover mandatory to Americans, and giving the insurer more power over doctors over HMO cited the whole health plan to be inefficient and would have caused a deficit budget.

Conclusion

To wind up, this study ends by quoting, "Clinton's Health Care Plan Laid to Rest". It is evident that the high expectation of the Congress on Clinton-Care Plan before the election was not reflected in the presentation of the proposal by Hillary Clinton to have it enacted into law. Mixed reaction from different quotas dominated the whole process since the appointment of the team, its preparation, to the presentation of their proposal. The expectation to have a universal, affordable and efficient health reform altogether did not come to pass at that time. The team appointed to work on the Clinton-Care Plan, led by Hillary Clinton failed to gain ground because it had not made further consultation from related stakeholders; neither did the team consider suggestions presented to them. Some proposals were remarkable though they were not implementable, they may appear to be presenting an affordable health policy to the peop...