DES MOINES — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton demonstrated Monday that she had lost none of her fervor for revamping the nation's healthcare system, unveiling a plan that would require every American to have health insurance, offer generous subsidies to help pay for the policies and gingerly seek to tamp down rapidly rising medical costs.
Simple announcement of the plan represented something of a personal triumph for the New York senator, whose 1993-94 overhaul effort with her husband, then-President Clinton, went down to ignominious defeat. With the new plan, she could have a rare second chance to recast the nation's healthcare system.
Clinton said that she had learned the lessons of her earlier failure, pledging to do less mandating and more negotiating. And there was some evidence of that at work in Monday's presentation. Clinton repeatedly said that Americans who were satisfied with their current health insurance coverage need not make any change, something that the earlier Clinton plan did not promise -- an omission that proved immensely unpopular. In addition, she and her aides left key elements open to bargaining.
But when it came to the broad outlines of the proposal, Clinton was as adamant as she was 14 years ago that it was a moral imperative that the nation seek to provide all Americans with health insurance. She said this would require sweeping changes to, among other things, the drug and insurance industries that spearheaded the drive to defeat her plan in the 1990s.
"Today, as we strive for a new beginning to the 21st century, I believe everyone -- every man, woman and child -- should have quality affordable healthcare in America," Clinton said in a speech at Broadlawns Medical Center in Des Moines.
"It is time for us to come together and start living up to our own values."
Half of the $110-billion-a-year cost of Clinton's American Health Choices Plan would come from savings that she says she can squeeze from the current healthcare system. The rest would come largely from rolling back President Bush's 2001 tax cuts for the top two income tiers.
Independent analysts said that Clinton's savings from modernizing the system and improving clinical practices were highly uncertain but little different than those cited by other candidates, such as Democrat John Edwards. The plan drew a generally negative response from the presidential hopefuls.
