presidential blunders

President Obama has signaled his intent to reform the nation's health care system. Bill Clinton tried to do the same thing, with famously disastrous results. But they weren't the first to have become embroiled in the debate. One of the earliest presidents to have waded significantly into the health reform waters was Franklin Pierce, who issued a lengthy and stinging veto of a bill that would have funded the building and management of state insane asylums. Franklin was well known for opposing any involvement by the federal government in state and local issues. Rather than just a simple veto of the bill, Franklin issued an astonishing 4,621-word written letter to the U.S. Senate on May 3, 1854, in which he stated his position in a way that has reverberated to this day. Franklin wrote:

"I readily and, I trust, feelingly acknowledge the duty incumbent on us all as men and citizens, and as among the highest and holiest of our duties, to provide for those who, in the mysterious order of Providence, are subject to want and to disease of body or mind; but I can not find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States."

An almoner, as defined by Merriam-Webster's is "one who distributes alms." To what extent the government should be involved in private health matters will frame the current health discussion...just as it did 155 years ago.