My life полностью

“We’re sorry; the government health center is closed now,” says the recording on the other end of the line. “However, if this is an emergency, you may call 1-800-GOVERNMENT.” She tries it, only to be greeted by another recording: “We’re sorry, all health-care representatives are busy now. Please stay on the line and our first available . . .”

“Why did they let the government take over?” she asks plaintively. “I need my family doctor back.”

The story goes on to say that the only problem with the radio spot, produced by a Washington-based group called Americans for Tax Reform, is that it isn’t true.

Another massive campaign of direct mail, by a group called the American Council for Health Reform, maintained that under the Clinton plan people would face five years in jail if they bought extra health care. In fact, our plan explicitly stated that people were free to purchase any health-care services they wanted.

The ad campaign was false, but it was working. In fact, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, published March 10 in an article titled “Many Don’t Realize It’s the Clinton Plan They Like,” showed that when people were asked about our health plan, a majority opposed it. But when asked about what they wanted in a health plan, the major provisions that were actually in our plan were all supported by more than 60

percent of the people. The article said, “When the group is read a description of the Clinton bill without identifying it as the President’s plan and of the four other leading proposals in Congress, the Clinton plan is the first choice of everyone in the room.”

The poll authors, one Republican and one Democrat, are quoted as saying, “The White House should find this both satisfying and sobering. Satisfying because the basic ideas which they have drawn up are the right ideas in the view of many people. But sobering because they clearly have communicated very little to the public and in that respect have ceded too much to the interest groups.”

Despite this, Congress was moving forward. The bill had been referred to five committees in Congress, three in the House and two in the Senate. The House Labor committee voted out a health-care bill in April that was actually more comprehensive than our bill. The other four committees were hard at work trying to forge consensus.

The first week of May was another example of everything happening at once. I answered the questions of international journalists in a global forum sponsored by President Carter’s center at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta; signed the School-to-Work bill; congratulated Rabin and Arafat for their agreement on handling the handover of Gaza and Jericho; lobbied the House of Representatives to pass a ban on deadly assault weapons; cheered its passage by two votes, in the face of fierce opposition from the NRA; announced that the United States would increase its assistance to South Africa in the aftermath of its first full and fair election, and that Al and Tipper Gore, Hillary, Ron Brown, and Mike Espy would head our delegation to President Mandela’s inauguration; held a White House event to highlight the special problems of women without health insurance; tightened sanctions on Haiti because of the continued killing and mutilation of Aristide supporters by Lieutenant General Raoul Cedras; appointed Bill Gray, head of the United Negro College Fund and former chairman of the House Budget Committee, to be special advisor to me and Warren Christopher on Haiti; and got sued by Paula Jones. It was just another week at the office.

Paula Jones had first appeared in public the previous February at the Conservative Political Action Committee convention in Washington, D.C., where Cliff Jackson introduced her, allegedly for the purpose of “clearing her name.” In David Brock’s American Spectator article based on the allegations of the Arkansas state troopers, one of their charges was that I had met with a woman in a Little Rock hotel suite who later told the trooper who had taken her there that she wanted to be my “regular girlfriend.”