-Caveat Lector-
HILLARY DOCTORED HIS IDEAS
New York Post-Sunday, October 29, 2000
By ROD DREHER
THE doctor whose ideas formed the basis for the 1993 Clinton
health-care proposal blames "know-it-all" Hillary Rodham
Clinton's arrogance, hunger for recognition and ideological
rigidity for dooming the plan he'd worked on over two decades.
>From the barricades of the Hillary-care revolution, Dr. Paul
Ellwood picked up a hard-knocks education in the way the
temperamental first lady handles public-policy matters.
"Blame the other side for your own failings, arrogantly approach
things that you don't necessarily know anything about and be
pretty much for greater government control of things rather than
having the private sector involved in solving problems," he says.
"The Bush campaign likes to call the plan a government takeover
of America's health-care system," Dr. Ellwood says. "It wasn't
when it was handed to the Clintons."
Dr. Ellwood, a physician who describes his political leanings as
"obsessively independent," came to the project with more than 20
years of full-time experience thinking about and debating
health-care policy. He had worked on health policy with every
presidential administration since Lyndon Johnson's.
In 1970, he began convening meetings of professionals from
various branches of the health-care industry at his Wyoming
condominium. They became known as the Jackson Hole Group.
"This group reached a market-oriented consensus on an approach to
health care that was called �managed competition,'" he says.
"There was pretty much agreement that everybody was going to have
to make some sacrifices if we were going to proceed in that
direction."
The Jackson Hole Group first came to Bill Clinton's attention
during the 1992 Democratic primaries, when a New York Times
reporter (!) phoned Dr. Ellwood and asked him to send some
material to the Arkansas governor, who felt politically
vulnerable on the health-care issue. Dr. Ellwood did as he was
asked, and never heard back from the campaign.
Five days after Clinton was inaugurated, he appointed his wife to
head a task force charged with developing and selling a proposal
to rein in health-care costs and give medical coverage to all
Americans.
"Then the next thing we heard was that they were going to appoint
this massive committee, and anybody connected with the
health-care industry was going to be excluded," he says.
"We were the enemy. We needed to be reformed. You cannot imagine
how insulting this was."
The committee Mrs. Clinton eventually assembled was packed with
opponents of managed competition, Dr. Ellwood asserts.
"That was a warning. Managed competition really moved health care
toward the market, to the right. These advisers were the people
who didn't want it that way. They wanted it to be all Medicare."
After first being rebuffed, Dr. Ellwood and several allies got
the opportunity to meet Mrs. Clinton to explain their concerns,
including those about rumors the Clintons wanted to impose price
controls on the health-care industry.
"One of the points I tried to make in the meeting was that
health-care costs were moderating, and if they wanted to turn the
health-care system against them, they should push the
price-control idea," he says.
"When I said that prices were moderating, Mrs. Clinton said
�You're wrong about that!'" he says, still incredulous. "Aside
from being a doctor, I had been working on health-care policy for
25 years."
How did Team Hillary mangle the Jackson Hole plan?
"They moved it to the left. They've had much more in the way of
public controls and intervention in the plan," says Dr. Ellwood.
"Furthermore, they proposed using price controls as the way of
saving money if the market didn't work. We would never have done
that. And they were unwilling to go along with any of the
bipartisan approaches."
Mrs. Clinton's unwillingness to collaborate with members of
Congress - which the Democrats controlled - is what sticks most
in the doctor's mind from those days.
"She found it difficult, I think, to share power and the
limelight with other members of Congress."
Although he won't take sides in the New York Senate contest, the
physician says he suspects Rick Lazio would be a more bipartisan,
collaborative senator.
"He's much less ideological, and that's certainly what's needed
if we're going to make any progress on health care, or anything
else in the Senate."
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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