Exclusive photo! Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and Tipper Gore.
When then-First Lady Hillary Clinton held a health care forum at Bunker Hill Community College in 1993, she was joined by Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and Tipper Gore, wife of Vice President Al Gore.
As the editor of the Hillary Clinton Quarterly, I assigned a photographer to cover the event. Here is one exclusive photo from that event. I had almost forgotten that we had these pictures. They show us a rare moment in time – and they all certainly seem to be enjoying themselves.
Enjoy!
– Frank
Tipper Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Kennedy at Health Care Forum, Boston 1993.
Big surprise: wealthy conservatives behind attacks on health care reform.
A recent story by Real News Network identified the major players and the money behind the attacks on health care reform.
Along with a significant investment in media advertising, several of these groups have also been stoking the anti-reform anger boiling over at town hall meetings.
Who are wearing the black hats in this political melodrama? According to Real News Network –
Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is led by health care entrepreneur Rick Scott, the co-founder of Solantic urgent care walk-in centers, which he’s spread across Florida and is looking to expand. While 80 percent of its patients have at least some insurance, Solantic also bills itself as an alternative to emergency-room care and a resource for patients with no insurance.
FreedomWorks, which has been advocating against the overhaul but has not launched TV ads, is chaired by Dick Armey, the former Republican majority leader of the House of Representatives from Texas.
Patients First and Patients United are creations of a larger group called Americans for Prosperity. AFP’s Web site describes a grassroots organization with more than 700,000 members that advocates “for public policies that champion the principles of entrepreneurship and fiscal and regulatory restraint. It was started by billionaire David Koch, of the Koch Industries oil family, one of the country’s top donors to conservative, free-market causes. The foundation’s board includes Art Pope, a former North Carolina legislator also involved in conservative causes, whose family owns hundreds of discount stores.
Two other grassroots groups have financed ads targeting peoples’ fears that more government involvement would hurt seniors and hasten end-of-life decisions.
One of them, Club for Growth, which advocates lower taxes, is led by president Chris Chocola, a former Republican congressman from Indiana who lost his re-election bid in 2006. Club for Growth this week announced a $1.2 million ad campaign against a health care overhaul, to run in North Dakota, Colorado, Arkansas and Nevada.
The other, 60 Plus Association, is a conservative senior advocacy group that wants to abolish the estate tax. Singer Pat Boone is the group’s national spokesman. Chairman Jim Martin started the group in 1992 with fund-raising help from conservative direct mail guru Richard Viguerie. It spent $1.5 million on TV ads opposing a healthcare overhaul in the last week.
Anti-reform logic: The poor don’t deserve health care.
Back during the first Clinton Administration, the main assassins of health care reform were Bob Dole and Phil Gramm. They did the dirty work of the special interests. The only thing that has changed since 1993-1994 is that more Americans are uninsured and the health care system is even more dysfunctional.
What hasn’t changed is the ideology that says that Americans without health care must fend for themselves, that the taxes of “well-off” Americans should not be used to pay for health care for the poor (i.e. it’s their fault that they are poor and should suffer the consequences), and that in a theoretical free-market economy the health care providers — doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, etc. — should be free to maximize their profits regardless of the consequences.
The graph below shows who exactly has and who doesn’t have health insurance. According to a Gallop poll taken in June, almost 42% of Hispanics, 20% of blacks, and 29% of those earning less than $36,000 annually are without health insurance. These are the “Have Nots” in this debate. The total group without health insurance, according to the poll, includes some 47 million Americans.
Predictably, of those earning more than $90,000 a year, only 4.5% are without insurance. This is the constituency of the GOP and the conservative Blue Dogs who are trying to deny the poor a public option.
It’s easy to imagine how the smug, wealthy conservatives out there can be so callous about denying health care to the poor. Unfortunately, they are the ones with the clout. They are the ones that our politicians are listening to.
We have to make sure they hear our voices, too.
