Obama's Health Care Dilemma Evokes Memories Of 1974

[progressoid]

Kaiser Health News spoke to Stewart Altman, then a deputy assistant secretary in the health department and an author of Nixon's overhaul plan. More recently, he was a health care adviser to President Barack Obama’s campaign.

He is now a professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He spoke about why health reform failed in the ‘70s, and his sense of déjà vu.

Obama's Health Care Dilemma Evokes Memories Of 1974

As soaring health care costs threatened to push medical care out of reach for many families, the president offered an ambitious new plan to curb the growth in spending and extend health coverage to every American. But he faced fierce opposition from Capitol Hill.

Sound like the current political wrangling? Well, that was 1974 and the president was Richard M. Nixon. The partisan battles and Democratic infighting that threatens this year’s health reform efforts is reminiscent of the battles dating back to that era, says a veteran of that campaign.

...

Q: How does the 1974 debate over health reform compare to what's happening today?

A: It was a very interesting period. In the ‘70s this was much more inside baseball. Now, we have thousands of people who are involved in health care in Washington from larger congressional and administration staffs to many more people working for every consulting group and every constituency group that it is affected. And, while the public learned about it through the newspapers, it was not nearly as vitriolic. I've never, even during the Clinton years, seen this level of animosity on both sides. it was much more of a battle among plans.

...

Q: What were the plans?

You had four or five different options. You had the far left, which was the original Kennedy bill . But then Kennedy himself became much more of a centrist. Then you had the administration bill. It was, in some respects, quite similar to where the Obama administration started out. It had an employer mandate. It had big subsidies for poor people to buy private insurance. It had an extension of Medicaid. And you had a strong push, surprisingly from a Republican administration.


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http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Checking-In-With/stuart-altman.aspx