Altman Part 1

President Nixon was one of the first of his time to attempt to introduce comprehensive national health insurance reform. His stance on the issue was against what many thought the kind of person he was, but he still attempted to introduce it. At the time everyone in Congress had their own ideas on what national health insurance should be like for Americans, so there were very many arguments when the different ideas began to come into conflict with each other. Nixon eventually failed to get his bill passed, and the Watergate scandal forced him to resign before he could attempt to try again. Almost all of his major competitors also were forced out of positions of influence, and a major reform of any kind for national health insurance was considered a dead issue until over 20 years later, when Bill Clinton took office. Clinton attempted to introduce his own version of comprehensive national health care reform in what was termed managed competition. This would set budget ceilings on all the states for health care to their own populations and even regionalize the costs. However, after a lengthy debate that included many protests and an ad campaign that is called the "most destructive in history," Clinton's plan failed and was tossed out of consideration.
I found it interesting that everyone had their own ideas about what health care should be, and that was one of the main reasons why any kind of reform took so long to come about. No one could agree to any compromise without seeming "weak," and so the movement almost always ended in defeat for whoever was proposing the new ideas.