Health Care Reform in the 1990s

In a national economic crisis where healthcare costs soar and millions of Americans go uninsured, it seems like the country repeats the same sort of political cycle the country saw during the Clinton health care reform in the 1990s.

Individual Health Coverage

During 1993, after spending time working over a plan with a "health policy" team, President Clinton issued a speech to Congress where he introduced the administration's Health Security Plan. This effort of health care reform in the 1990s was monumental and very optimistic. In fact, many experts now say that it's possible the Clinton plan was a bit too optimistic. Among other things, ultimately the plan proposed a way to provide universal health insurance to every American.

The country was more than ready for major policy change regarding the medical system and the insurance industry in the United States for a few very important reasons.

• Health care spending by the early 1990s was extremely high.
• Health care costs were also high, and many patients claimed costs were falsely inflated.
• By the early 1990s, the number of uninsured Americans hit record levels.

The Clinton health care plan mandated employers to contribute toward employee health care premiums, and would allow Americans to choose from a number of competing private insurance policies. Additionally, the government would tightly regulate insurance policies so that both healthy and unhealthy citizens would receive equal coverage and the annual increase of insurance premiums would be carefully controlled and not allowed to spiral out of control.

The Clinton plan was balanced in that while its ultimate goal was the liberal ambition of universal health coverage, it also allowed for the free market and for the private insurance industry to remain viable, with the only change more tightly managed competition and regulation by the government.

Immediately following President Clinton's speech, public polls emboldened health care reform proponents. Most polls reflected overwhelming support across the country for the Clinton administration's health care plan. However, the onslaught of criticism from the Republican Party, as well as insurance industry lobbyists, combined with the complexity of the plan itself, ultimately destroyed the plan within a year.

The early optimism and encouraging level of support quickly degraded into political infighting, disagreement on specific details within the plan, and lobbyist efforts that not only eroded public support for the administration's specific health care reform plan, but it also turned health care reform into a political issue that few politicians would dare to touch for almost two decades afterwards. Lobbyists and other organized groups attacked health care proposals so thoroughly that every bill presented throughout the 1990s was eventually shot down. These included bills proposed by the following politicians.

• Cooper
• Grandy
• Chafee
• Mitchell
• Moynihan

Each and every attempt to provide Americans with relief from the growing, powerful and overpriced health care industry resulted in defeat. The Clinton administration was forced to concede the particular battle of health care reform in order to focus on larger issues of the day.

During this early era in the Clinton administration, while health care cost and health insurance premiums were a major concern among most Americans, they were not on the national forefront. The issue that was at the top of the list for most Americans was the 1991-1992 economic recession. Because of that fact, in 1993 Clinton could not devote as much time or political clout to health care reform. The economy took precedence as well as the resources of the administration, in particular because the economy would play such a large part in his 1994 re-election campaign.

NAFTA was also very high on the administration's list of important issues that took priority over health care reform. Many experts believe that the opportunity for health care reform was missed. Instead, the following events cascaded into public confusion and mistrust of the Clinton health care plan.

• Groups opposed to health care reform began a major assault against it throughout 1994.
• The plan itself was too ambitious and attempted to solve too many major problems at once.

Each task within the plan, such as managing private insurance, offering universal coverage and mandating employer payments served as fodder for opponents who were able to convince the American public that the Clinton health care plan would give the government too much control over health care, and that well insured middle-class Americans would end up losing their current level of coverage.

If the past efforts at reform were any indication, the insurance industry and the medical industry have a great deal of pull in Washington. The entire industry is a powerhouse of lobbyist groups, organizations and funding that remain a substantial threat to the potential for universal health care coverage for all Americans. The industry prefers a free market where insurance companies are able to strive for increased profit through cost reduction efforts that often leave many families with bare bones health care and medical doctors struggling to collect payment from those insurance companies.

• Roadside Assistance Plans
• Full Coverage Dental Insurance
• Low Cost Motorcycle Insurance
• Car Accident Reports

• Free Medical Release Forms
• Sample Medical Release Form
• Guardian Dental Insurance
• Insurance Sample Cancellation Letter
• Sears Appliance Extended Warranty

• Category:Health Insurance