Bill Clinton – The Health Care Blog

At the Core, Tuskegee Has Never Been Resolved

Jul 27, 2022

BY MIKE MAGEE

July 25, 1972 was fifty years ago this week and it is a day that all AP Science journalists know by heart. As Monday’s AP banner headline read: “On July 25, 1972, Jean Heller, a reporter on The Associated Press investigative team, then called the Special Assignment Team, broke news that rocked the nation. Based on documents leaked by Peter Buxtun, a whistleblower at the U.S. Public Health Service, the then 29-year-old journalist and the only woman on the team, reported that the federal government let hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama go untreated for syphilis for 40 years in order to study the impact of the disease on the human body. Most of the men were denied access to penicillin, even when it became widely available as a cure. A public outcry ensued, and nearly four months later, the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” came to an end.”

There’s a Story Behind the “Craziest Thing in the World”

Oct 4, 2016• 7

By STEVE FINDLAY

screen-shot-2016-10-04-at-12-39-26-pm Is he on or off message — or what? We are taking about Bill Clinton, who said in a speech today/yesterday that small business folks and individuals were “getting killed” by Obamacare….with “premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.”

“The people who are getting killed in this deal are the small businesspeople and individuals who make just a little too much to get in on these subsidies,” Clinton said. He added that for many people, Obamacare’s changes have meant “their premiums doubled and their coverage [was] cut in half.”

Ouch. But then he went on to say that one solution is to allow Americans to buy into Medicare, as Hillary has proposed. We’re not sure if she’d be pissed or pleased with these remarks. Perhaps not bad to let Bill signal her awareness that things with the exchanges are not good, and that she might be open to bigger changes in the program than she’s owned up to so far.

Herman Cain’s (Mostly) Conventional Plan for Health Care Reform

Nov 3, 2011• 8

By Avik Roy

It’s easy to forget, but Herman Cain first became famous in political circles for his wonky takedown of President Bill Clinton at a town hall meeting where the President was touting his universal health-care plan. (Herman Cain walked President Clinton through the math of why Clinton’s plan would drive Godfather’s Pizza out of business.) Today, Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain spent half an hour with the GOP Congressional Health Care Caucus, where he outlined his proposals for health reform.

As Newsweek put it at the time, Cain was “the real saboteur” of the Clinton plan:

An articulate black entrepreneur, Cain transformed the debate when he challenged Clinton at a town meeting in Kansas City, Mo., last April. Cain asked the president what he was supposed to say to the workers he would have to lay off because of the cost of the “employer mandate.” Clinton responded that there would be plenty of subsidies for small businessmen, but Cain persisted. “Quite honestly, your calculation is inaccurate,” he told the president. “In the competitive marketplace it simply doesn’t work that way.”

The switchboard at Godfather’s was lit up with supportive calls. It was as if the small business community — a very large and politically powerful group — had been told to march on Washington. Cain, said Larry Neal, an aide to Sen. Phil Gramm, “was the lightning rod.”

For better or worse, Cain’s platform effectively represents consensus Republican thinking on health care. This is good, insofar as Cain endorsed repealing Obamacare, Medicaid block grants, etc. But it’s unclear if he proposed anything that would move beyond the meat-and-potatoes of Republican consensus. And there’s a lot more to do with health-care reform than simply repealing Obamacare.

Jason Millman of Politico was at today’s GOP confab for Cain’s address. “Cain said if he had the right numbers in Congress, he would sign legislation repealing health care reform on March 23, 2013 — three years after it was signed into law. A bill by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), H.R. 3400, would be the starting point for replacement legislation, he said.”