alexander cockburn says there's not a chance in a million of a workable healthcare scheme |
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Just like the architect of the Tower of Babel bustling out of his studio with a fresh set of drawings, Hillary Clinton has produced a new health plan. Politicians don't care to admit they messed up, and Mrs Clinton is no exception to this rule. The most she would concede during the roll-out ceremonies earlier this month is that the last time she took on the health industry, she was too ambitious. This is a most forgiving posture towards one of the great political disasters of the 1990s.
In the dawn of the Clinton era, many Americans believed the new president might actually do something to fix the mess optimistically described as the health care system. Bill Clinton's pledge to do so was a prime reason why he got elected.
In the dawn hours of his presidency, he announced he was handing the big assignment to his wife. The political |
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Hillary Clinton managed to offend the very Democratic leadership essential to making health reform a reality
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conditions were favourable. In early 1993, 70 per cent of all Americans wanted a system of national healthcare, a sound base on which to build a national coalition powerful enough to cow the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies - two of the most powerful forces on the American political scene.
Mrs Clinton is not a populist by temperament. She had been a powerful corporate lawyer in Little Rock, accustomed to covert deals behind closed doors. As she embarked on her mission, all the early headlines concerned her obsession with secrecy.
By the time Mrs Clinton's 1342-page Bill landed in Congress later in 1993, she had managed to offend the very Democratic leadership essential to making health reform a reality. The proposal itself, under the mystic mantra 'Managed Competition', embodied all the distinctive tropes of neo-liberalism: a naive complicity with the darker corporate forces, accompanied by an adamant refusal to even consider building the popular political coalition that alone could have faced and 
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Inside Hillaryland
Hillary Clinton, frontrunner in the 2008 race
