Health Care Task Force Records

Dublin Core

Title

Creator

White House Health Care Task Force

Is Part Of

National Archives Catalog Description

Identifier

2006-0885-F

Description

This collection contains records on President Clinton’s efforts to overhaul the health care system in the United States. In 1993 he appointed First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to be the head of the Health Care Task Force (HCTF). She traveled across the country holding hearings, conferred with Senators and Representatives, and sought advice from sources outside the government in an attempt to repair the health care system in the United States. However, the administration’s health care plan, introduced to Congress as the Health Security Act, failed to pass in 1994.

Due to the vast amount of records from the Health Care Task Force the collection has been divided into segments. Segments will be made available as they are digitized.

Segment One
This collection consists of Ira Magaziner’s Health Care Task Force files including: correspondence, reports, news clippings, press releases, and publications. Ira Magaziner a Senior Advisor to President Clinton for Policy Development was heavily involved in health care reform. Magaziner assisted the Task Force by coordinating health care policy development through numerous working groups. Magaziner and the First Lady were the President’s primary advisors on health care. The Health Care Task Force eventually produced the administration’s health care plan, introduced to Congress as the Health Security Act. This bill failed to pass in 1994.
Contains 1065 files from 109 boxes.

Segment Two
This segment consists of records describing the efforts of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to get health care reform through Congress. This collection consists of correspondence, newspaper and magazine articles, memos, papers, and reports. A significant feature of the records are letters from constituents describing their feelings about health care reform and disastrous financial situations they found themselves in as the result of inadequate or inappropriate health insurance coverage. The collection also contains records created by Robert Boorstin, Roger Goldblatt, Steven Edelstein, Christine Heenan, Lynn Margherio, Simone Rueschemeyer, Meeghan Prunty, Marjorie Tarmey, and others.
Contains 697 files from 47 boxes.

Segment Three
The majority of the records in this collection consist of reports, polls, and surveys concerning nearly all aspects of health care; many letters from the public, medical professionals and organizations, and legislators to the Task Force concerning its mission; as well as the telephone message logs of the Task Force.
Contains 592 files from 44 boxes.

Segment Four
This collection consists of records describing the efforts of the Clinton Administration to pass the Health Security Act, which would have reformed the health care system of the United States. This collection contains memoranda, correspondence, handwritten notes, reports, charts, graphs, bills, drafts, booklets, pamphlets, lists, press releases, schedules, newspaper articles, and faxes. The collection contains lists of experts from the field of medicine willing to testify to the viability of the Health Security Act. Much of the remaining material duplicates records from the previous segments.
Contains 590 files from 52 boxes.

Segment Five
This collection of the Health Care Task Force records consists of materials from the files of Robert Boorstin, Alice Dunscomb, Richard Veloz and Walter Zelman. The files contain memoranda, correspondence, handwritten notes, reports, charts, graphs, bills, drafts, booklets, pamphlets, lists, press releases, schedules, statements, surveys, newspaper articles, and faxes. Much of the material in this segment duplicates records from the previous segments.
Contains 435 files from 47 boxes.

Segment Six
This collection consists of the files of the Health Care Task Force, focusing on material from Jack Lew and Lynn Margherio. Lew’s records reflect a preoccupation with figures, statistics, and calculations of all sorts. Graphs and charts abound on the effect reform of the health care system would have on the federal budget. Margherio, a Senior Policy Analyst on the Domestic Policy Council, has documents such as: memoranda, notes, summaries, and articles on individuals (largely doctors) deemed to be experts on the Health Security Act of 1993 qualified to travel across the country and speak to groups in glowing terms about the groundbreaking initiative put forward by President Clinton in his first year in the White House.
Contains 804 files from 40 boxes.

Publisher

William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum

Collection Tree

Freedom of Information Act Collections
- Health Care Task Force Records