Public opinion has changed since Clinton tried health care reform

Public opinions have changed since President Bill Clinton tried to reform the health care system more than a a decade ago. USA Today reports that "the years since Clinton's failed effort have seen the cost of medical services nearly double and softened some of the skepticism voiced by Americans in 1993 and 1994. The percentage who say Congress should pass comprehensive legislation, rather than dealing with health care incrementally over several years, has increased by 10 points, USA TODAY/Gallup Polls show."

"Unlike Clinton's plan, which would have created a new government regulatory system to monitor premiums and benefits, [President Barack] Obama's builds more on the current private insurance system. And unlike Clinton, Obama got most of the affected interest groups — doctors, hospitals, drugmakers, even insurers — to acknowledge that the system needs to be fixed. To gauge how Americans' views have changed since 1993, USA TODAY spoke to many of the same people from Maine to Washington that the paper's reporters interviewed during Clinton's effort" (Wolf, 11/23).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.