Clinton’s health plan was no cure

Re “Don’t forget the lessons of ClintonCare,” Current, April 8

Ezra Klein blames the failure of healthcare reform in the Clinton administration on political ineptness, and he quotes a poll indicating that a majority of Americans now wish that the Clinton plan had been enacted. Did the poll remind its participants that the Clinton proposals would have forced most Americans into “managed care” as a supposed solution to rising costs?

We should not forget that the Clinton proposals for healthcare reform were very complicated, confusing and a bureaucratic mess that President Clinton was not able to sell to a Congress controlled by his own party. A huge, new, unfinanced government contraption would fail again. Imprisoning everyone in a government monopoly with nowhere else to go -- as we now seem to be doing with our military veterans -- would not be reform but a nightmare.

RICHARD E. RALSTON

Newport Beach

The writer is executive director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine.