In 1993, United States President Bill Clinton's administration proposed a significant health care reform package. Clinton had campaigned heavily on health care in the 1992 election, and quickly set up a task force, headed by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, to come up with a comprehensive plan to provide universal health care for all Americans, which was to be a cornerstone of the administration's first-term agenda.

The result, announced by President Clinton in an address to Congress on September 22, 1993, was a complex and complicated proposal running more than 1,000 pages, the core element of which was an enforced mandate for employers to provide health insurance coverage to all of their employees through competitive but closely-regulated health maintenance organizations (HMOs). The plan, referred to derisively as "Hillary Care" by some, was initially well-received by liberal political leaders and most Americans who said health care was the most important issue facing the country. At its introduction the plan seemed likely to pass through the Democratic-controlled Congress.

Conservatives, libertarians and the insurance industry, however, staged an effective and well-organized campaign opposing Clinton's "Health Security" plan and criticized it as being overly bureaucratic and restrictive of patient choice. The effort included extensive advertising criticizing the plan, including the famous Harry and Louise ad, which depicted a middle-class couple despairing over the plan's bureaucratic nature. (The advertisements may have been particularly effective because they characterized Clinton's plan as being against middle class values).

Meanwhile, Democrats, instead of uniting behind the President's original proposal, offered a number of competing plans of their own. Some criticized the plan from the left, preferring a Canadian-style single payer system.

On September 26, 1994, Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell announced that the plan was dead, at least for that session of Congress. The defeat weakened Clinton politically, and contributed to widespread public frustration with perceived Congressional gridlock. In the 1994 election, the Republican revolution gave the GOP control of both houses of Congress, ending prospects for a Clinton-sponsored health care overhaul. Comprehensive reform aimed at creating universal health care in the United States have not been seriously considered by Congress since.

See also

• United States health reform under Clinton

External links

• "The Great Health Care Debate of 1993-1994" by Derek Bok in Public Talk
• "What Happened to Health Care Reform?" by Paul Starr in The American Prospect
• Timeline from PBS's The System

Clinton Administration Initiatives | Healthcare policy in the United States | Hillary Rodham Clinton | United States proposed federal legislation | Healthcare in the United States