No policy issue has bedeviled Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more than health care. Ever since the collapse of her proposal for universal coverage in 1994, critics have used the issue as prime evidence in their case that she is, at heart, a big-government liberal with a zeal for social engineering. But now, as Mrs. Clinton heads into her re-election campaign and a possible bid for the presidency, she is trying to recast the political disaster of 1994 as something else: as a badge of honor, as a symbol of lessons learned and, perhaps most significant, as invaluable preparation for dealing with the problems in the health care system today.
"A lot of people know that I was involved in health care back in '93 and '94, and I still have the scars to show for it," Mrs. Clinton says in a new biographical film that she is showing on the campaign trail. After raising the topic in a recent speech, she added, "But it's worth wading into again — and we're going to have to." Mrs. Clinton's approach to health care is strikingly different this time around, a measure of her evolution from an impatient agent of change to a cautious senator — and potential presidential contender — keenly attuned to the political center.
In 1994, she and President Bill Clinton insisted that anything short of universal coverage was unacceptable and proposed a vast overhaul of the health care system to provide it: a 1,342-page plan that drew withering fire from an array of interest groups and died in a Democratic Congress. Today, her plans to expand coverage are tempered and incremental. Her first major goal appears to be universal health coverage for children, which she hopes to advance by expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or Schip, an existing federal program up for review in 2007.
"I have to do what the political reality permits me to do," Mrs. Clinton said in a recent interview. She said that covering everyone remained her ultimate goal, but that Democrats would be fighting "a lot of rear-guard actions" as long as Republicans controlled Congress. Mrs. Clinton has not pushed a comprehensive coverage plan in her first term in the Senate. As part of the Democratic minority, she says she has primarily focused on defending existing programs from cuts by conservatives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/10/washington/10hillary.html?hp&ex=1149912000&en=73e368da26a2cd9d&ei=5094&partner=homepage