On September 22, 1993, President Bill Clinton, in a televised address, introduced the Health Security Act (HAS) (H.R. 3600, 1993), which would have provided universal health care coverage, or as Clinton (1993) put it, "comprehensive health benefits that can never be taken away" (p. vi). Clinton's speech received wide acclaim, and polls showed broad support for health care reform (Skocpol, 1995). A year later the HAS was dead without having ever come to a vote. In November 1994, in what many viewed as a repudiation of the HAS, voters swept Democrats from Congress and handed control to the Republicans. Universal coverage has disappeared from national debate, and many believe it will not surface again for many years (Aaron & Rescuer, 1995).
Universal coverage has long been a concern for social workers. During the 1930s the Committee on Economic Health Security, led by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, proposed national health insurance (Wencour & Reich, 1989). Later Wilbur Cohen, assistant secretary of health, education, and welfare under President John E Kennedy, and other social workers played leading roles in the development of Medicare. In recent years, NASW has identified universal coverage as a priority for the profession. In 1993 Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) introduced the National Health Care Act (S. 684,1993), NASW's proposal for a Canadian-style single-payer system (Mazarin, 1995).
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