Archive for the ‘Hillary Clinton’ Category

Papers offer peek into Hillary Clinton's failed healthcare initiative

WASHINGTON As Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to reshape the nation's healthcare system in her husband's first term as president, she got all the right advice from senior aides: Consult closely with members of Congress, build bridges with business leaders, communicate clearly to nervous voters, move swiftly.

The first lady and her husband ultimately failed in nearly all those efforts, nearly sinking Bill Clinton's presidency.

Thousands of documents released Friday, which detail that failure as well as other policy disputes of the Clinton White House, provide new details on what remains one of the defining chapters in Hillary Clinton's career. The papers also foreshadow the challenges the Obama administration would encounter as the current president worked to pass the Affordable Care Act 16 years later.

Nervous and egotistic members of Congress, difficult policy issues such as whether individuals should be required to buy insurance, and worries that the administration might be promising more than it could deliver all feature prominently in the documents, released Friday by the National Archives.

So, too, does a steady current of concern by White House staffers over the arcane policy as well as the process that the first lady had established.

"By far the biggest problem is the complexity," White House advisor Mike Lux noted in a January 1994 memo. "The complexity of the bill is not only confusing, but frightening."

The roughly 4,000 pages of documents the first of as many as 33,000 pages scheduled to be released in the next several weeks do not appear to contain bombshell revelations. The papers had been sealed for more than 12 years under the Presidential Records Act, which allows certain memos to be withheld if they contain confidential advice or information related to federal appointments.

The ardor with which both Republican and Democratic operatives dissected them testified to how much the 2016 presidential election already has come to focus on Clinton's so-far-undeclared candidacy.

The documents clearly illustrate the central role that she played in advancing what was her husband's top priority after he took office in 1993. As first lady, Clinton led a massive task force to draft a plan to build a new health insurance system to control costs and expand coverage.

Clinton's advisors repeatedly warned her that the White House should be deferential to Congress.

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Papers offer peek into Hillary Clinton's failed healthcare initiative

Documents show Hillary Clinton's role in husband's presidency

WASHINGTON Bill Clinton's aides revealed concern early in his presidency about the health care overhaul effort led by his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and later about what they saw as a need to soften her image, according to documents released Friday. Hillary Clinton now is a potential 2016 presidential contender.

The National Archives released about 4,000 pages of previously confidential documents involving the former president's administration, providing a glimpse into the ultimately unsuccessful struggles of his health care task force, led by the first lady, and other Clinton priorities such as the U.S. economy and a major trade agreement.

Hillary Clinton's potential White House campaign has increased interest in Clinton Presidential Library documents from her husband's administration during the 1990s and her own decades in public service.

A former secretary of state and New York senator, Hillary Clinton is the leading Democratic contender to succeed President Barack Obama, though she has not said whether she will run.

The documents released Friday included memos related to the former president's ill-fated health care reform proposal in 1993 and 1994, a plan that failed to win support in Congress and turned into a rallying cry for Republicans in the 1994 midterm elections.

Hillary Clinton was chairwoman of her husband's health care task force, largely meeting in secret to develop a plan to provide universal health insurance coverage.

White House aides expressed initial optimism about her ability to help craft and enact a major overhaul of U.S. health care.

"The first lady's months of meetings with the Congress has produced a significant amount of trust and confidence by the members in her ability to help produce a viable health reform legislative product with the president," said an undated and unsigned document, which was cataloged with others from April 1993. The document urged quick action, warning that enthusiasm for health reform "will fade over time."

But the documents also showed the growing concerns among Clinton's fellow Democrats in Congress. Lawmakers, it said, "going to their home districts for the August break are petrified about having difficult health care reform issues/questions thrown at them."

Administration officials also wanted to distance Hillary Clinton from a staff meeting on the touchy subject of making health care cost projections appear reasonable. Top aides wrote an April 1993 memo saying pessimistic cost-savings projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office were "petrifying an already scared Congress."

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Documents show Hillary Clinton's role in husband's presidency

Obama & Methodist Hillary Clinton Covered Up Ambassador’s Paedophilia – 2013 – Video


Obama Methodist Hillary Clinton Covered Up Ambassador #39;s Paedophilia - 2013
Steven Greer/Kerry Cassidy/Bill Ryan/Project Camelot/Alex Jones/Mark Dice/David Icke/Peoples Voice/Queen Elizabeth/Prince Philip/Price Charles/David Cameron/...

By: Gaia Militia

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Obama & Methodist Hillary Clinton Covered Up Ambassador's Paedophilia - 2013 - Video

Hillary Clinton: My future is still ‘TBD’ – video – Video


Hillary Clinton: My future is still #39;TBD #39; - video
The former secretary of state is keeping quiet when it comes to a possible run for the White House in 2016. In a Q A session at the University of Miami, she ...

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Hillary Clinton: My future is still 'TBD' - video - Video

Hillary Clinton open to "evidence-based" Obamacare changes

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a baby step into the radioactive politics of Obamacare on Wednesday, using a pair of speeches in Florida to stake out a nuanced defense of the law that Republicans have used to criticize President Obama for years - and one they hope to deploy against Clinton if she runs for president in 2016.

"I think we are on the right track in many respects but I would be the first to say if things aren't working then we need people of good faith to come together and make evidence-based changes," Clinton said during a speech in Orlando before the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, according to CNN.

She singled out Obamacare's impact on small businesses for review, particularly the law's requirement for businesses with over 50 employees to provide health coverage to those employees. But she embraced certain aspects of the law, including the provision of free preventive care and the retention of young adults on their parents' insurance plan through the age of 26.

"Part of the challenge is to clear away all the smoke and to try to figure out what is working and what isn't," Clinton explained, blaming "misinformation" from the law's opponents for much of the confusion. "What do we need to do to try to fix this? Because it would be a great tragedy, in my opinion, to take away what has now been provided...I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bath."

Republicans, whose criticism of Obamacare shows no signs of abating, quickly slammed Clinton for her defense of the controversial law.

"We're glad to hear Hillary is embracing Obamacare and look forward to her campaigning on it in 2016," the Republican National Committee said in an email shortly after Clinton spoke.

Earlier on Wednesday, the RNC previewed Clinton's remarks with another email: "Even as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a strong supporter of Obamacare." That charge stemmed from a new book, "HRC," that says Clinton played a "pivotal, if underappreciated" role in corralling support for Mr. Obama's proposed health-care reforms among his cabinet members.

Clinton is no newcomer to the tricky politics of health care reform: During the 1990s, when her husband, Bill Clinton, was president, the then-first lady led an unsuccessful attempt to overhaul America's health-care system. Her proposal at the time came to be known as "Hillarycare."

After her address in Orlando, Clinton traveled to the University of Miami to speak to over 6,000 students and faculty members, urging young people in the audience to sign up for insurance.

"You can't sit here today and tell me for sure you won't have a car accident, you won't have a slip or a fall, you won't have some kind of disease that you never thought you would ever be stricken by," she warned, according to the Washington Post. "You just don't know - nobody knows."

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Hillary Clinton open to "evidence-based" Obamacare changes