'Hillarycare' Wasn’t Her Bad

As Hillary Clinton gets set to roll out her new health care proposal, Paul Starr in the American Prospect wans to correct the record on her last, disastrous effort. Hillary gets all the flak for the 1993 flameout, but the mistakes are grossly misdiagnosed—and they belong to Bill, says Starr, who was a key health policy adviser to the Clintons. The first lady was chair of the task force, but the president’s ideas were already formed.

The ’08 hopeful is “haunted” by the “fiction” that she authored the debacle, in part by her secrecy and rigidity. But Bill always intended to compromise, Starr writes, and only presented such a big program so he’d have bargaining chips. It was the GOP that failed to come to the table, so the plan was never even discussed. (More Hillary Clinton stories.)