Former President Clinton said Thursday that he is to blame for his administration’s failed health care plan, not his wife, who spearheaded the effort.
Clinton was asked about the plan during a campaign event, where he spoke to about 600 people crowded into a YMCA gymnasium. The health care effort was led by then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, now a New York senator and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“She has taken the rap for some of the problems we had with health care the last time that were far more my fault than hers,” the former president said.
He said part of the problem was a lack of money to finance the health care expansion. Money could be available this time to pay for expanded health care, such as the universal health care plan Hillary Clinton has proposed.
“This time, when you let the tax cuts for upper-income people expire, it’ll create a pool of money that wasn’t there last time,” Bill Clinton said. “We told her she had to get to universal coverage and there would be no new money. She had to figure out how to do it.”
So now she has exactly no record to run on at all. Sen. Barack Obama has already noticed.
When asked by a reporter about the former president’s comments, Sen. Barack Obama, a rival for the presidential nomination, said Hillary Clinton shouldn’t tout her experience and then not take responsibility for the failures.
“If part of your basis for experience is the work you did on health care, then presumably when it didn’t work out, that’s part of the experience as well,” Obama said during a brief stop outside a convenience store and gas station in Albia.
I went dumpster diving on Hillary’s official site just to see what she might be currently saying about HillaryCare. To my surprise, she says absolutely nothing about it.
Nobody has worked harder or longer to improve health care than Hillary Clinton. From her time in Arkansas when she improved rural health care to her successful effort to create the SCHIP Children’s Health Insurance program which now covers six million children, Hillary has the strength and experience to ensure that every man, woman and child in America has quality, affordable health care.
Nothing about that debacle in 1993-94. That’s a glaring omission. I also noticed a glaring omission or two in the list of how her plan affects different populations on this page.
How about business owners? Run of the mill white guys? Her plan would affect us too. Do we not count in Hillary’s world?
Finally and apropos of not very much, I’d like to offer some unsolicited web design advice to Team Hillary. Split up the facebook and YouTube icons on your front page.
I kid you not, the first thing I noticed when I scanned that row was this juxtaposition.
Maybe it’s because I’m one of those white guys who’s left off Hillary’s list.
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