What Hillary Has Learned from '93

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To be sure, the three Democratic health care plans are very similar. But they come with body language, with auras and emanations. The Obama body language is cautious and conciliatory. He promises a new style of governing to build a bipartisan consensus. Edwards' body language is populist and defiant. "The system in Washington has been hijacked for the benefit of corporate profits and the very wealthiest," he said, attacking Clinton. "If you defend the system that defeated health care, I don't think you can be a President who will bring health care." Edwards calls for an "employer mandate," requiring businesses to provide insurance for their employees. But if you read the fine print, it's more rhetorical than real; his plan, like the other two, provides an escape hatch for employers. If they don't want to provide health insurance, they can pay for their employees to participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, which offers a range of insurance choices. The wonky shorthand for this concept is "pay or play."

Unlike Edwards' populist intensity, Clinton's body language communicates pragmatism and making life easier for the business community. Her "individual" mandate sends a signal to small businesses that they won't be forced into the system. She even rewards small businesses that already provide health insurance with a tax credit. This seems quite astute. The biggest change in the political playing field since 1993 lies in corporate America; it is staggering under the burden of providing health insurance and competing against overseas companies that don't. The price of every U.S.-made automobile famously includes $1,500 of health benefits. If the business community — minus the insurance industry — supported reform, the ecology of the Senate might change very quickly. So after she unveiled her plan, I asked Clinton, in a phone interview, what it offered big businesses staggered by health care costs. "Business will have a new set of choices," she said. They'll be able to drop their own plans and opt into the federal system. "I think it would make economic sense for a number of them," she added, "because ... they'll be in a bigger pool and they won't have to pay for the administrative costs they now have." That's a big change for the Clintonistas: Back in 1993, they railed against an individual mandate because it would encourage businesses to dump their employee plans.

In our interview, Clinton said the models for her current proposal were the 1993 Republican plan and the individual-mandate plan passed in Massachusetts by former Governor Mitt Romney. She said one of her top health care advisers, Laurie Rubiner, worked on both the Chafee and Massachusetts plans. Clinton said she was watching the progress in Massachusetts, where the plan is having some problems because sufficient taxes weren't raised to help pay for it. But Romney dashed to dissociate himself from Hillary's homage. He has now distanced himself from his own program and prefers 50 separate state-created plans, an attempt to placate conservatives who abhor anything that emanates from Washington. Romney said Clinton's plan provided "government insurance, not private insurance," which is not true. He also said Clinton was "inspired by the European bureaucracies" — to which Clinton responded, in our interview, "I think they've created six new bureaucracies to deal with all this [in Massachusetts]," and then noted, aridly, that her new plan creates none. That, for now, is true.

Clinton's utter ease with this topic, her ability to parry Romney's jabs without breaking a sweat, is the latest bit of evidence that her experience — including past disasters — may actually count for something. If she is to win the Democratic nomination, Clinton will have to do a fair amount of baggage shedding between now and the primaries. There is all manner of baggage to be shed. Some of it is personal: her cold, calculating image. Some of it — like her current fund-raising imbroglio, the $850,000 she had to return to the skeevy Norman Hsu — is a debilitating reminder of Clinton-era misdemeanors. Some of it is beyond her control, and has to do with the prospective First Laddie. Much of the substantive baggage has to do with her stiff-necked mismanagement of health care, her unwillingness to modify her ideas, to play the angles, to be a pol. Her current, clever health care plan makes all that moot. Her load is lighter now, and the job confronting those who would defeat her is getting tougher every week.