Boomerang: Health Care Reform and the Turn Against Government (Revised)

Theda Skocpol's "Boomerang" is nearly as interesting and sharp as her opinions. It's another winner.

This book promises to explain to the reader why the Clinton health care plan failed. The author does this rather well, pointing out how flaws in Clinton's "selling" of the program along with the disunity of sympathetic interest groups could not match the unity and purpose of Republican opponents. It is important to remember that Ms. Skocpol is a scholar, which can be good and bad. Her work is scholarly so it is well-proven (like a scholar) but also very narrow in scope (also, sadly, like a scholar). If you want an analysis of what went on behind closed doors in the 1993-94 fight or want a real discussion on the merits of health care reform, go elsewhere. But if you want an analysis solely on "why Clinton failed," this book does a very good job.

National Health Care?--The compassion of the IRS!--The efficiency of the post office!--All at Pentagon prices! Theda Skocpol's Boomerang--Clinton's Health Security Effort and the Turn against Government in U.S. Politics opens with this collection of irreverent aphorisms sighted on the bumper sticker of an old American pick-up truck in the summer of 1994. Later that year, however, a political pundit hailed the Democratic party for "believ[ing] in great government enterprises to solve great problems." A real health reform effort was ignited. American optimism was high. Mere months later, the wind behind the sail of Clinton's proposed reform vanished and the effort lay in defeat--a casualty that seemingly leant credence to the Chevrolet's shameless propaganda. Skocpol's incisive work wends the reader through the course that was "the rise and resounding demise of the Health Security effort." Boomerang is not an explanation of health care reform. Rather, it is an exercise in politics--an eye-opening account of a massive political undertaking from a vantage close enough to be well inside the Beltway, but far away enough to spare the reader sleepy academic dogma. Skocpol begins our journey with a proclamation: "The presentation and decisive defeat of the Clinton plan in 1993-94 was a pivotal moment in the history of the U.S. governmental and political system." Ostensibly, the American political landscape is now irrevocably changed. That said, we enter the first of six chapters. The author initiates us with the embers of health reform talk from the early twentieth century. She then springs to the beginning of the current decade to explain how a Pennsylvania state senate hopeful put reform back into the American consciousness with a simple television campaign advertisement. Following the candidate's victory, several schemes for national reform were promulgated. Eagerly, 1992 Democratic presidential hopefuls picked up on the reform rhetoric. In time, the Democratic candidate emerged toting "an alternative middle-of-the-road approach to comprehensive reform"--and William J. Clinton was elected. Skocpol relates the fascinating story of the President's quick assembling of a health reform Task Force of experts charged with constructing the would-be plan for reform. The document, some 1,300 pages, arrived several months later into Clinton's tenure than planned and was very eagerly received by Washington insiders who quickly obtained leaked copies. After White House tweaking of the plan, which included such features as mandatory regional purchasing alliances (one of several features that was largely unrecognized and/or poorly understood by the citizenry), public approval was considerable. Skocpol's third chapter, "Democrats in Disarray," recounts what "went wrong...for the Clinton Health Security proposal." The author blames in part the virtual "dissapear[ance]" of Health Security from the President's agenda. Ostensibly, Clin