Jackson Hole Group Founder Criticizes Hillary Clinton

Calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a "know-it-all," Dr. Paul Ellwood said that Hillary Clinton's "arrogance, hunger for recognition and ideological rigidity" derailed the Clinton administration's 1993 health care proposal. In his Oct. 29 New York Post column, Rod Dreher interviewed Ellwood, who is the founder of the Jackson Hole Group, a collection of doctors, health care experts and medical executives who advocated for a market-based reform plan they called "managed competition." Ellwood said his group's plan was rebuffed by the Clinton administration, which instead pursued a "government takeover of America's health care system." Ellwood said, "We were the enemy. We needed to be reformed." He described Hillary Clinton's political strategy as "[b]lame the other side for your own failings, arrogantly approach things that you don't necessarily know anything about and be pretty much for greater government control of things rather than having the private sector involved in solving problems" (Dreher, New York Post, 10/29).