HEALTH  PLANS   (CONT)

resignation.

"The wagons were not only circling, but they were heavily arming and out for blood. It was very difficult to get anything through at that point," Price recalled.

Nixon first proposed national health insurance as a conservative California congressman in 1947. He grew up poor and lost two brothers to tuberculosis, which marked him for life. He frequently pointed to the cure for tuberculosis as a medical marvel that underscored the need for a public-private partnership on health care.

"It was something personal for him," Price said of Nixon's health-care push.

Despite the heated politics of Watergate, national health-care legislation was proceeding in Congress thanks to a compromise brokered by a young Democratic senator from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy, a Nixon nemesis.

But then, according to a 1974 political almanac published by Congressional Quarterly, the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers lobbied successfully to kill the plan. Unions hoped to get a better deal after the next elections.

The rest was, as they say, history.
Nixon resigned that Aug. 8. Four days later his successor, Gerald Ford, addressed Congress and sought a bipartisan effort to pass national health-care insurance. But the economy soured, Ford sought to rein in government spending and national health care languished.

"Today, I think there's national consensus that everybody should have health insurance. That consensus wasn't there then," said David Matthews, who served as President Ford's health secretary from 1975 to 1977. "There is more of a consensus that everybody should have it, but the real uncertainty is still about who should play what role."

In his 1992 book, "Seize the Moment," Nixon repeated his support for national health insurance, sounding remarkably like today's leading Democrats:

"We need to work out a system that includes a greater emphasis on preventive care, sufficient public funding for health insurance for those who cannot afford it in the private sector, competition among healthcare providers and health insurance providers to keep down the costs of both, and decoupling the cost of healthcare from the cost of adding workers to the payroll," he wrote.

Details of the 2008 presidential candidates' health-care proposals: http://www.health08.org/sidebyside.cfm

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