SEIU Local 1199WI

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How We Got Here

Round 1: Early 1990s Health Care Crisis

Clinton Health Care Plan: Significant efforts at the national level to control costs and provide universal access to health insurance fail. Major reform efforts are discredited as a result.

Bad strategy or Powerful Political Opponents: Many analysts attribute President Clinton's failure to win health care reform to problematic proposals. However, the best research shows that Clinton badly underestimated the level of opposition his proposals would receive from wealthy, powerful health care interests like insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. Opponents of health care reform outspent those in favor of reform by at least a 20 to 1 margin.

Post-Clinton Plan: Significant public efforts to control high health care costs and increase access to care are discredited as unfeasible.

Non-governmental Cost Controls: Efforts to control costs are made through the private marketplace, principally with HMOs.

Workforce Implications: Pressure from HMOs leads hospitals and other health care providers to significantly cut nursing and other staff, leading to the current shortages of staff.

Cost Controls Only Temporary: HMO driven cuts in staff and denial of care only yield temporary savings. The waste and profiteering that drive most of the cost increases grow worse. Many cost cutting decisions, like denial of primary care, resulted in higher costs later.

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