Matthew Cooper writes that “the idea that that the Clintons were unwilling to take half-a-loaf [on health care] back then [in 1993-94] is total revisionism.” (I saw the post via Kaus.) No, it’s not. Clinton aides said they would “roll right over” Senator Moynihan, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, if he raised objections to their plan. The Clintons promised to veto any plan that didn’t meet their standard of universal coverage: 91 percent coverage wasn’t good enough. In the summer of 1994, a bipartisan group of senators calling itself the Mainstream Coalition came out with a compromise bill. The unions, AARP, and other liberal interests rejected the compromise and the White House refused to make a deal. Maybe the Clintons would have failed anyway, but their rigidity didn’t help.
P.S. Cooper also writes, “And now that the outlines of a real plan are on the table we see the wolves gathering, first in opposition to the very seensible idea of a public plan–because Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich HATED their health insurance when they were in government–and then surely later to the whole cost of the package.” The federal employee health benefits plan provides employees with a lot of options, but none of them is government-run.