They say there's nothing new under the sun. That's certainly true with health care reform, with proposals from Democrats now running for the White House echoing plans pitched by Republican President Richard Nixon back in 1971. Too bad Tricky Dick–sidetracked by Watergate investigations–couldn't get the job done back then. He would have spared tens of millions of uninsured Americans a lot of heartache.
As noted in a Nov. 27 Sacramento Bee article, “Health Care Reform Tunes Sound Familiar,” President Nixon introduced his Comprehensive Health Insurance Act on Feb. 6, 1974, just days after announcing his intentions to the public during what turned out to be his final State of the Union address before being forced out of office.
“I shall propose a sweeping new program that will assure comprehensive health-insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it, with vastly improved protection against catastrophic illnesses,” he said at the time.
There was no mandate for individuals to buy coverage, as is the case with the plan proposed by Sen. Hillary Clinton. But it would have mandated that employers at least offer the coverage, while providing government subsidies to the self-employed and small businesses. Poor individuals who wanted coverage would be charged premiums based on a sliding scale, according to their income.
Where are the Liberal Republicans today–those who truly are “compassionate conservatives”? Someone like Nixon, for better or worse, wouldn't have even won a Republican primary state today, let alone the White House, if they called for universal health insurance or even employer mandates.
Of course, the call for universal health insurance goes back a lot further–all the way to 1948, when Democrat Harry Truman ran into a brick wall built by Congressional Republicans and the medical lobby to stop what they called socialized medicine. Sound familiar?
As usual, President Truman was pretty blunt in his response: “The medical lobby says it's 'un-American.' …I put it up to you. Is it un-American to visit the sick, aid the afflicted, or comfort the dying?….Does cancer care about political parties? Does infantile paralysis concern itself with income? Of course it doesn't.”
These debates over the need for health care reform have the feeling of the movie “Groundhog Day,” in which Bill Murray is forced to relive the same day over and over again. In the meantime, nearly 50 million are uninsured, and even those who have coverage have gaps galore.
If a Democrat takes the White House, will they get reform through? Has the time to act finally arrived? I think it has.
What do you folks think?
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