Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House recounted this discussion with Hillary.....

"I mentioned...to the first lady about medical savings accounts and just right away she said, 'We can't do that.' And I said, 'Well, why?' And she said, 'Well there's two reasons.' And I said, 'Well, what are they?' [And she said,] 'The first reason is with the medical savings account, people have to act on their own and make their own decisions about health care. And they have to make sure that they get the inoculations and the preventative care that they need, and we just think that people will skip too much because in a medical savings account if you don't spend it, you get to keep it or you can...accumulate it in a health care account. We just think people will be too focused on saving money and they won't get the care for their children and themselves that they need. We think the government, by saying 'You have to make this schedule. You have to have your kids in for inoculations here, you have to do a prescreening here, you have to do this'--the government will make better decisions than the people will make, and people will be healthier because of it.'

"I said, 'Well, part of that's an education process. People have to understand that [if] they behave a certain way, they're going to save money, [with the] preventive medicine issue--you get the prescreenings, if you can inoculate your kids you save money on it. I mean, they're not sick. You save money.' She said, 'No. We just can't trust the American people to make those type of choices...Government has to make those choices for people.'

"I said, 'Okay, we just disagree there. But what's the second reaosn?' And she said, 'Well, the second reason is, with a medical savings acount, savings are [like] an IRA. They go in as actually money saved and all that money will go into IRAs which goes to the private sector.' And she said, 'We can't afford to have that money go to the private sector. The money has to go to the federal government because the federal government will spend that money better than the private sector will spend it.' And so [I thought] holy mackeral. I can't argue these issues. These are philosophical issues."

Rep. Hastert, whose legislative plan included tax-deferred Medical Savings Accounts with contributions by employers. He concluded after a discussion with First Lady Hillary Clinton that there was little common ground on which to negotiate with the Clinton Administration on health care legislation. "Health Has No Fury," David Brock, The American Spectator, November 1996.