Ready to Operate

Not since Moses came down from the mountain bearing the Ten Commandments, Hillary Clinton joked last week, has a document been so anxiously awaited as her husband's proposal to reorganize radically the nation's ailing health-care system. That plan -- a 239-page brick of plain white paper printed last Tuesday and stamped PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL -- would represent the boldest, most expensive social initiative since the New Deal, bigger even than F.D.R.'s institution of Social Security half a century ago. It would intimately affect the health and livelihood of every American, while shifting billions of dollars in costs and savings among the...