FIRST SECRETS OF CLINTON HEALTH TASK FORCE OOZE OUT

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JUDICIAL WATCH has released records obtained from the Clinton
Presidential Library related to the National Taskforce on Health Care
Reform, a "cabinet-level" task force chaired by former First Lady
Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Clinton administration. Among the
highlights:

- A June 18, 1993 internal Memorandum entitled, A Critique of Our Plan,
authored by someone with the initials P.S. -  "I can think of parallels
in wartime, but I have trouble coming up with a precedent in our
peacetime history for such broad and centralized control over a sector
of the economy. . . Is the public really ready for this?. . .  none of
us knows whether we can make it work well or at all…"

- A "Confidential" May 26, 1993 Memorandum from Senator Jay Rockefeller
(D-WV) to Hillary Clinton on how to deal with critics. The memorandum
suggests that Hillary Clinton "use classic opposition research" to
attack those who were excluded by the Clinton Administration from Task
Force deliberations and to "expose lifestyles, tactics and motives of
lobbyists" in order to deflect criticism.  Senator Rockefeller also
suggested news organizations "are anxious and willing to receive
guidance [from the Clinton Administration] on how to time and shape
their [news] coverage."

- A February 5, 1993 Draft Memorandum from Alexis Herman and Mike Lux
detailing the Office of Public Liaison's plan for the health care reform
campaign.  The memorandum notes the development of an "interest group
data base" detailing whether or not organizations "support(ed) us in the
election." The database would also track personal information about
interest group leaders, such as their home phone numbers, addresses,
"biographies, analysis of credibility in the media, and known
relationships with Congresspeople."

The records released by Judicial Watch were obtained from the
approximately 13,000 records made publicly available by the Clinton
Library. The National Archives says there may be an additional 3,022,030
textual records, 2,884 pages of electronic records, 1,021 photographs, 3
videotapes and 3 audiotapes related to the Task Force that are being
withheld indefinitely from the public.  On November 2, Judicial Watch
filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court to force the release of all
the Task Force records.

"These documents paint a disturbing picture of how Hillary Clinton and
the Clinton administration approached health care reform – secrecy,
smears, and the misuse of government computers to track private and
political information on citizens," said Judicial Watch President Tom
Fitton.

http://judicialwatch.org/judicial-watch-releases-records-re-hillary-s-health-care-reform-plan-0


RECOVERED HISTORY
CLINTON AND NATIONAL HEALTHCARE

SAM SMITH, 'SHADOWS OF HOPE,' 1994 - During the first months of the
Clinton administration, one of the biggest national policy changes of
the past fifty years was being forged by a secret committee led by Mrs.
Clinton under procedures that periodically defied the courts and the
Government Accounting Office and whose public manifestations consisted
of highly contrived media opportunities, carefully staged "town
meetings," and similar artifices.

Despite the contrary evidence of public opinion polls, the concept of
Canadian-style single-payer insurance was dismissed early. Tom Hamburger
and Ted Marmor in the Washington Monthly tell of a single-payer
proponent being invited to the White House in February 1993. It was, he
said, a "pseudo-consultation;" the doctor was quickly informed that
"single payer is not politically feasible."

When Dr. David Himmelstein of the Harvard Medical School pressed Mrs.
Clinton on single payer, she replied, "Tell me something interesting,
David."

In other words, write Hamburger and Marmor: "Fewer than six weeks into
the Clinton presidency, the White House had made its key policy
decision: Before the Health Care Task Force wrote a single page of its
22-volume report to the President, the single payer idea was written
off, and "managed competition" was in."

If there was any popular, grassroots demand for "managed competition" it
never appeared. Managed competition had not been tested anywhere.
Nonetheless, reported Thomas Bodenehimer in Nation:

"Around Hillary Rodham Clinton's health reform table sit the
managed-competition winners: big business, hospitals, large (but not
small) commercial insurers, the Blues, budget-worried government leaders
and the 'Jackson Hole Group,' the chief intellectual honchos of the
managed competition movement. . . Adherence to the mantra of managed
competition appears to be the price of a ticket of admission to this
gathering."

What was finally proposed involved a massive transfer of the American
health industry - by some accounts now larger than the
military-industrial complex - to a small number of the largest insurance
companies and other major corporations. These were companies that had
the assets to play the game being offered - a medical oligopoly that
would dispense health-care under the rules of the Fortune 500 rather
than according to those of Hippocrates.

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