The Best of Notable Quotables; December 20, 1993

Dr. Kevorkian Award for Health Reporting

“But Hillary was smart to rip their heads off....After all, she’s right substantively: the [health insurance] industry has ‘brought us to the brink of bankruptcy,’ it does ‘like being able to exclude people from coverage, because the more they exclude, the more money they can make.’ No other industrialized country puts up with useless paper shufflers taking such a large cut of their health budgets...And she’s right tactically: if health-care reform is to live, the companies backing Harry and Louise must die. If 90 percent of those 1,500 insurers don’t die – if someone lifts the DO NOT RESUSCITATE sign off them – then the entire reform contraption will collapse.”

– Newsweek media critic Jonathan Alter on insurance industry’s “Harry & Louise” ads, Nov. 15.

Runners-up:

“The Clinton plan is surprisingly persuasive in supporting the longtime claim of the Clintons, and their top health care strategist, Ira Magaziner, that reform can be almost entirely from savings, without broad-based new taxes and with enough left over to reduce the federal budget deficit.”

– Time Washington Bureau Chief Dan Goodgame, September 20.

“White House officials said today the plan will require almost no new taxes. Most of the funding will come from employers who will be required to pay into a state system.”

– CBS reporter Linda Douglass, September 1 Evening News.

“Woven through the 1,300-page health plan is a liberal’s passion to help the needy, a conservative’s faith in free markets, and a politician’s focus on the middle class.”

– Washington Post reporters Steven Pearlstein and Dana Priest, October 28.

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