Wounds Salved, Clinton Returns to Health Care

[cal04]

No policy issue has bedeviled Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more than health care. Ever since the collapse of her proposal for universal coverage in 1994, critics have used the issue as prime evidence in their case that she is, at heart, a big-government liberal with a zeal for social engineering. But now, as Mrs. Clinton heads into her re-election campaign and a possible bid for the presidency, she is trying to recast the political disaster of 1994 as something else: as a badge of honor, as a symbol of lessons learned and, perhaps most significant, as invaluable preparation for dealing with the problems in the health care system today.

"A lot of people know that I was involved in health care back in '93 and '94, and I still have the scars to show for it," Mrs. Clinton says in a new biographical film that she is showing on the campaign trail. After raising the topic in a recent speech, she added, "But it's worth wading into again — and we're going to have to." Mrs. Clinton's approach to health care is strikingly different this time around, a measure of her evolution from an impatient agent of change to a cautious senator — and potential presidential contender — keenly attuned to the political center.

In 1994, she and President Bill Clinton insisted that anything short of universal coverage was unacceptable and proposed a vast overhaul of the health care system to provide it: a 1,342-page plan that drew withering fire from an array of interest groups and died in a Democratic Congress. Today, her plans to expand coverage are tempered and incremental. Her first major goal appears to be universal health coverage for children, which she hopes to advance by expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or Schip, an existing federal program up for review in 2007.

"I have to do what the political reality permits me to do," Mrs. Clinton said in a recent interview. She said that covering everyone remained her ultimate goal, but that Democrats would be fighting "a lot of rear-guard actions" as long as Republicans controlled Congress. Mrs. Clinton has not pushed a comprehensive coverage plan in her first term in the Senate. As part of the Democratic minority, she says she has primarily focused on defending existing programs from cuts by conservatives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/10/washington/10hillary.html?hp&ex=1149912000&en=73e368da26a2cd9d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[BayCityProgressive]

1. Good for Hillary

bring on the social engineering!:)

[MrModerate]

2. Frankly, her health care stand in 1994 . . .

Is what keeps me interested in her (presumed) candidacy. Ultimately, universal health care WILL come to this country -- it's the only way we can possibly pay for it.

And while her eternal tacking toward the center ("don't call it triangulation, bud!") is like fingernails down a blackboard to me, I do think her ability to simulate sincerity about "centrist" issues could be a useful trait in the White House.

[BayCityProgressive]

3. I think she is

a realistic option for president. Being a realist I can't see anyone more left wing winning the general. She has opposed ALL of Bush's tax cuts...which makes her more liberal than most of her Democratic collegues on tax issues. She supports universal healthcare. She supports in her autobiography paid family medical leave time. Her book It Takes A Village showed she has a progressive view on our education system. Her husband put in place FMLA,Earned Income Tax Credit, and a progressive income tax so you know she will support those thigns. She opposes ANWR drilling and social security privatization. She supports card check voting for unions, she is supportive of women's and gay rights. She threatened to go to court herself to save affirmative action. She is hardly the devil she is made out to be here. Oh, also she has moved to save net neutrality.

[BayCityProgressive]

4. Also

I think she would instantly respond to negative attacks unlike Kerry. I liked Kerry, however I thought he made some unwise campaign moves.

[MrModerate]

5. I fear her caution will be read as insincerity . . .

And that, along with the intense dislike that the wingnuts have of her, could sink her candidacy.

However, as president, I think she'd do about as well as the circumstances allow (Bush will have been pitching shit into the stables for 8 yeaars before she could get in office, remember.)

And she does have that other incalculable asset -- Bill Clinton.

[1620rock]

6. Good for her. The repugs are scared shitless of Hillary, you...

...don't fu*K with a woman like Hillary. The repugs HATE an educated articulate smart woman like H.

[oasis]

7. Hillary has a firm grasp on all of the issues that Americans care about

[BayCityProgressive]

8. I will even go one step further

and say that I do really think at heart she could be a socialist. Socialism even within Social Democratic and Socialist parties has changed over the years in how it would be implemented. It is said that Hillary's college thesis was written on Saul Alinksy who was a left wing radical. She also has done some other left wing things in her past. Also, Her concern for using government to effect change for all society and to use government to steer society is socialist. I don't use political terms like liberal, conservative, and socialist as dirty words though so others mayhave a different perspective.

[oasis]

9. Hill plays it cagey right now but her cabinet makeup will tell the tale.nt

[karynnj]

10. This is really the same as Kerry's Kids' first

in fact Kerry and Kennedy wrote the original legislation that eventually became S-CHIP. (Kennedy and Hatch were the sponsors when it actually passed. Kerry's name was dropped when Kennedy got a Republican co-sponsor.