But the ambitious Clinton reform effort flopped; indeed, it never even came to a vote in Congress. There were several explanations for that defeat, ranging from Bill and Hilary Clinton’s political mistakes to the hidebound nature of America’s political institutions. But the most common theory about the failure of the Clinton reform plan—and of the Roosevelt, Wilson, Truman, and Nixon reform plans before it—involved the nature of health care itself. This line of analysis holds that the business of providing and paying for Americans’ medical care is so complex and involves so much money that
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