Health Care Sent to Surgery

Whenever former President George Bush put trusted friend James A. Baker III on a problem, that would send a signal that the issue was a top priority. By placing Hillary Rodham Clinton in charge of health care reform, President Clinton has done the same thing.

Recently Clinton was asked whom he most wants in the room when he must make a crucial decision. His answer was his wife. So it makes sense that Clinton has put the First Lady, a highly regarded attorney and his most trusted adviser, in charge of coming up with a health care plan.

The high-stakes move is an unquestionable affirmation that the President considers reform of the nation’s desperately troubled health care system his top economic priority.

Health care costs are eating up a record 14% of the gross domestic product. That means the United States spends more on health care than any other industrialized nation--yet in one key health indicator, preventing infant death, it has slipped to a dismal 19th in the world. Thirty-seven million Americans have no health insurance. Thus Clinton must get a grip on runaway health costs if there is to be any hope of managing the nation’s budget.

There are big political risks for Clinton in putting the First Lady in charge of the team seeking to devise a health care proposal within three months. Yes, it shows he’s serious, but if the plan falls short, both of the Clintons will have to be prepared, to put it mildly, to take the heat. And if it falls short, questions will be raised about the wisdom of putting the President’s wife, an attorney not known as a health care expert, in charge of so crucial a project.

But those possibilities pale in comparison to the certain disaster that awaits if Clinton does not stick to his campaign promise to tend to the economy and overhaul the health care system. It’s a job almost as tough as curing the common cold. Here’s hoping the Clintons can offer the nation’s ailing health care system something at least as good as chicken soup.