If the system I proposed had been adopted, it would have reduced inflation in health-care costs, spread the burden of paying for health care more fairly, and provided health security to millions of Americans who didn’t have it. And it would have put an end to the kinds of horrible injustices I had personally encountered, like the case of a woman who had to give up a $50,000-a-year job that supported her six children because her youngest child was so ill she couldn’t keep her health insurance, and the only way for the mother to get health care for the child was to go on welfare and sign up for Medicaid; or the case of a young couple with a sick child whose only health insurance came through one parent’s employer, a small nonprofit corporation with twenty employees. The child’s care was so costly that the employer was given the choice by its insurer of firing the employee with the sick child or raising the premiums of all the other employees by $200. I thought America could do better than that. Hillary, Ira Magaziner, Judy Feder, and all those who helped them had crafted a plan that we could implement while reducing the deficit. And contrary to how it was later portrayed, health experts generally praised it at the time as moderate and workable. It certainly wasn’t a government takeover of the health-care system, as its critics charged, but that story came later. On the night of the twentysecond, I was just glad that the TelePrompTer was working. Toward the end of September, Russia dashed back into the headlines, as hard-line parliamentarians tried to depose Yeltsin. In response, he dissolved parliament and called new elections for December 12. We used the crisis to increase support for our Russian aid package, which passed the House, 321–108, on September 29 and the Senate, 87–11, on September 30.
By Sunday, October 3, the conflict between Yeltsin and his reactionary opponents in the Duma erupted into a battle on the streets of Moscow. Armed groups carrying hammer-and-sickle flags and portraits of Stalin fired rocket-propelled grenades into the building that housed a number of Russian television stations. Other reform leaders in former Communist countries, including Václav Havel, issued statements in support of Yeltsin, and I did, too, telling reporters that it was clear that Yeltsin’s opponents had started the violence, that Yeltsin had “bent over backwards” to avoid using excessive force, and that the United States would support him and his effort to hold free and fair elections for parliament. The next day Russian military forces shelled the parliament building and threatened to storm it, forcing the surrender of the rebellion’s leaders. Aboard Air Force One, on my way to California, I called Yeltsin with a message of support.
The battle in Moscow’s streets was the top news story across the world that night, but the news in America led with a different story, which marked one of the darkest days of my presidency and made famous the phrase “Black Hawk Down.”
In December 1992, President Bush, with my support, had sent U.S. troops to Somalia to help the UN
after more than 350,000 Somalis had died in a bloody civil war, which brought famine and disease in its wake. At the time, Bush’s national security advisor, General Brent Scowcroft, had told Sandy Berger they would be home before my inauguration. That didn’t happen because Somalia had no functioning government, and without our troop presence, armed thugs would have stolen the supplies the UN had been providing and starvation would have set in again. Over the next several months, the United Nations sent in about 20,000 troops and we reduced the American force to just over 4,000, down from 25,000. After seven months, crops were growing, starvation had ended, refugees were returning, schools and hospitals were reopening, a police force had been created, and many Somalis were engaged in a process of reconciliation moving toward democracy.
