Comparing the 2009 Health Care Agenda with the 1993 plan

About 16 years ago, on September 22, 1993, President Clinton delivered an address to the nation outlining his plans for health care reform. It was based on "The Task Force on Health Care Reform," organized by his wife Hillary in January 1993 who appointed 550 persons to 35 different working groups, each focusing on one specific feature of reform. One working group addressed the ethical foundations of the new health plan. Some members of that ethics group say there were 14, some say 15 ethical values and principles submitted. It was reported in the Feb. 1994 issue of the Journal of Family Practice and the HEC Forum 1995 and in Journal of Medicine and Philosophy in 1994 as “Ethicists and Health Care Reform: An Indecent Proposal?” by Laurence J. O'Connell, Ph.D. (a Lutheran) who then contributed his views on the 15 ethical values and principles to the “Special Report: Health Care” in The Lutheran, December 1993.

Hillarycare was a lot shorter, clearer and better researched than any of the present House and Senate versions (Obamacare), and involved much more input from the general public and specialists as opposed to just staffers and lobbyists writing what Congressmen needed to say. However, the public didn’t like an unelected official taking over their health care, and disliked her personally, although in hindsight and considering what we’ve got today from a group of Marxist and socialist advisors in the White House, her version seems much less bureaucratic and cumbersome. In any event, within a year, it was dead. Obama and friends think it was talked and debated to death, and that’s why they’ve renamed a crisis and tried to ram jam cram it down our throats in the dead of night during a recess period in August. The Republicans have been helpless to stop it; it's all in the Democrats' lap now. The start date for Obamacare is so far in the future there is no way to know what diseases, technology or cures may be on the horizon by then, so cost projection is just a fantasy. Think what has changed just within the technology of medical records, surgery for obesity and the treatment of AIDS since 1993.

But essentially the ethical underpinnings of Obamacare is unchanged Hillarycare. It has just grown to obese proportions.

The 15 ethical values as the base of the Clinton Plan as printed in The Lutheran, Dec. 1993 p. 32. These will look very familiar.

1. Health care is a fundamental human right.
2. Access to health care must be universal.
3. Benefits must be comprehensive and basic.
4. The benefits must be distributed equally to be a fundamental social good.
5. No pre-existing conditions can deprive a person of this community good.
6. It will be supported in a proportionate way by those most able to pay.
7. It will be intergenerational without weighting toward the elderly.
8. It will be rationed in a prudent and humane way because resources are finite.
9. Only truly effective treatments will be offered.
10. It will be high-quality.
11. It will be streamlined and will simplify the bureaucracy.
12. Individual choice will be evaluated and balanced against the community good.
13. Each person will contribute to the common good by being responsible and not wasting health-care resources.
14. Physicians will not be asked to engage in activities that are inconsistent with their professional commitments and their integrity will be protected.
15. There must be an effective appeal mechanism to protect individuals.

Folks, there is NO CRISIS. About 10% of American citizens (30,000,000 according to the President's last speech) do not have adequate health care. We have a huge government medical program now which covers some very well, and others very poorly, and some have chosen to not have either government nor private insurance. Under the "new" improved plan, there will still be about 5% not covered. This is a power grab. Not a reform.