On this morning’s “Morning Edition” on NPR, Steve Inskeep interviewed Bill Clinton about worldwide health issues. In the course of discussing his efforts arould the world, Inskeep raised the 1993-94 HillaryCare fight:
Clinton: Well, I don’t know if I have any advice for him, but I think that what we tried to do back in ’93 and ’94, still has some relevance. The real problem was that we didn’t have any money ’cause we had a big deficit so we couldn’t provide universal coverage without some sort of employer mandate.
Inskeep: Also couldn’t build enough political support for a specific solution in ’93 and ’94.
Clinton: Yeah, well, that was because we had big opposition from the health insurance companies. I think people now see that for what it is. We are spending 16 percent of our income on health care. No other country spends more than 11 [percent]. We spend more on the last two months of life than anyone else. And we also have a lot of defensive medicine because malpractice insurance is so expensive. If we had more self-insurance in big pools, we could also bring that price way, way down.
