Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 24, 1993 TAG: 9301240010
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
HILLARY CLINTON GETS CHORE OF HEALTH-CARE REFORM FIRST LADY TAKES ON SPECIAL
Hillary Rodham Clinton will need all of her lawyerly skills as she tries to forge consensus on health-care reform, an issue on which special interests and their congressional allies have blocked change for years.Physicians, insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and other health industry groups have bought a place at the reform table by spending lavishly on the presidential and congressional races in 1992. The American Medical Association alone spent $2.7 million to gain a say over legislation.
Recognizing the obstacles posed by interest groups and the sheer complexity of the issue, Clinton last week turned to his closest adviser - his wife - to lead the way. The news delighted reform-minded lawmakers, who say they hope she can the unite the administration and tame opponents.
Capitol Hill sources say that she should be able to quell turf battles among Clinton aides on the health issue. Domestic policy adviser Carol Rasco, senior policy adviser Ira Magaziner and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala all have sought jurisdiction.
"By putting Hillary in there, you're able to end all that," says a congressional aide involved in health reform. The question is whether she can overcome the special-interest pressures.
Hillary Clinton, a lawyer and long her husband's top adviser, undertook a similar task in 1982 by helping Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, buck teachers and other interests to pass school-reform legislation. But the health-reform battlefield is much bigger and the interest groups more numerous and better financed.
"Why hasn't health care, any sort of national health-care proposal come before Congress up to this point?" asks Josh Goldstein of the Center for Responsive Politics, which studies the impact of money on politics. "Not only does the money get access and influence, and get pieces of legislation for the contributions, it can also be something that suppresses pieces of legislation."