Health Care a Likely Campaign Issue for Rodham Clinton
Observers predict that presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is likely to make health care reform a major issue in her 2008 presidential campaign, The Hill reports.
In off-the-record statements delivered last month to the Democratic Leadership Council in Cambridge, Mass., former President Bill Clinton said that Rodham Clinton's failed 1994 health care plan will not prevent her from discussing health care reform, The Hill reports. He noted that some aspects of her plan now are being discussed in Congress, such as government negotiations for prescription drug prices.
According to The Hill, the indications are that Rodham Clinton's "strategy will be to turn health care, a political weakness, into a strength." In his remarks to DLC, Clinton said that health care reform is going to be the most important domestic issue of the 2008 election and that Rodham Clinton's knowledge of the issue is likely to work to her advantage.
According to The Hill, Rodham Clinton also might benefit from "the fact that business and health care sectors have increasingly aligned with organized labor and other Democratically affiliated interests in calling for federal action" to address rising health care costs and the number of uninsured U.S. residents (Cusack/Young, The Hill, 1/23).