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Organised Labor And Health Reform, Laurence Weil

Laurence Weil

By the summer of 1993, the AFL-CIO had endorsed in principle President-elect Bill Clinton's "managed competition" approach to comprehensive health reform, and committed itself to a multi-million dollar effort on behalf of the Administration's proposal. By February 1994, labor's promised commitment had grown to $10 million, although it had thus far spent only about $500 thousand (2,3). In the end the labor movement anted up between $5 and $10 million (about two-thirds in direct expenditures, the rest in in-kind contributions), an effort that proved wholly inadequate in the face of the mammoth sums of money and aggressive tactics deployed by …