The Rise and Resounding Demise of the Clinton Plan

Prologue: The great health reform debate of 1994 ended with a whimper, on the heels of an election that turned out the powerful Democratic majority in the House and Senate and sent some of its most influential members packing. What role did health care reform play in this turning of political fortunes? Was it the unwitting victim? Or was it, in fact, the catalyst? In this paper Theda Skocpol argues that the political reversal of the November 1994 elections might turn out to be one of the biggest turning points in twentieth-century American history and that, far from being a mere casualty, the Clinton plan and Congress's failure to adopt it (or anything else) contributed materially to the revolt of the electorate. This is ironic, Skocpol notes, because the Clinton plan was itself designed as a middle-of-the-road compromise between the market-based and the regulation-based reforms that had been discussed up to that point. The demise of the Clinton plan is notable, she writes, not just as an attempted policy change that “fizzled out, leaving the same terrain clear for a revised attempt to solve the same problems from a similar starting point.” Indeed, the words and actions of the 104th Congress early in its first session suggest that this starting point has been eradicated from the American political landscape. Skocpol teaches in the departments of government and sociology at Harvard University and has published widely on the politics of U.S. social policy making, past and present. She received a doctorate in sociology from Harvard. Her most recent book, Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective, was published by Princeton University Press earlier this year. She currently is studying episodes of attempted health care reform across the twentieth century.