Steele: ’09 health reform bid more intrusive than ’93 effort

The 2009 battle to reform healthcare in the U.S. is much more broad than the failed 1993 bid waged by President Bill Clinton’s administration, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele alleged Monday.

The Republican leader charged that this year’s proposed healthcare reforms would threaten to revamp the system in more profound ways than the ones proposed in the ’93 battle, which was spearheaded by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.

“‘HillaryCare,’ such as it was called back in ’92, ’93, you know, was tailored in a specific way and had some very fine points that it addressed,” Steele said during an appearance on Fox News. “This is much more broad-based.”

“It’s not just about insurance coverage,” he added. “It’s about the various ways in which you access the system, who gets to make those decisions.”

“I think…that there are some differences that are very clear, in terms of the depth and the breadth at which the federal government wants to intrude in on this issue.”

Steele asserted that like in the 1990s, the 2009 debate would turn on the issue of the cost of the reforms — a key issue Republicans made of the Clinton-era reforms as they have in the Obama-era debate.