Placebo.

• Position: Clinton health care reforms - Editorial

President Clinton's long-awaited health-care address to Congress and the American people, delivered toward the end of September, was a masterful presentation. The President spoke with warmth and vigor and conviction, superbly articulating the concerns that most Americans feel about a health-care system that has been dysfunctional for many decades. He outlined the major problems that must be addressed, and made it clear that reform could no longer be put off. Political analysts were all but unanimous in their judgment that Bill Clinton had delivered the best speech of his career.

A few days later, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had presided over the Administration's health-care task force during its many months of deliberations, began making the rounds of Congressional hearings. She, too, received rave notices for her command of an incredibly complex subject and for her engaging and quick-witted performances. Before Senators and members of the House of Representatives, as well as on the talk-show circuit, she presented in graphic detail the inadequacies of our health-care system.

Thanks to the Clintons, more Americans than ever before understand the urgency of the health-care crisis, and a substantial number of them have even begun to comprehend some of its arcane details. They understand that health care in this country is enormously expensive--$2,556 a year for every American, as compared with $1,770 for Canadians and $972 for Britons. They know that some thirty-five million Americans are not covered by health insurance, mainly because they cannot afford it, and are, therefore, at high risk of being wiped out financially by a serious illness if, in fact, they can obtain treatment for it at all. They recognize the reality that members of "high-risk groups" and those suffering from "pre-existing conditions" can be denied insurance or assessed exorbitant premiums. They are aware that worry about health coverage compels people to remain in jobs they would rather leave, or to take jobs they would rather turn down, or to refuse retirement to which they are fully entitled.

For diagnosing the sickness of our health-care system, and doing so in an effective and persuasive manner, the Clintons deserve our appreciation and gratitude. But what have they proposed as a cure? A placebo.

A placebo, says our dictionary, is "a substance having no pharmacological effect but given merely to satisfy a patient who supposes it to be a medicine." Precisely. The...