In 1994, President Clinton had ambitions to renovate the state of the nation's health care. Despite his efforts to revamp the system, he did not receive the support he needed at the time. The Congressional Quarterly Almanac of 1996 explains how two senators, Nancy Kassebaum (R-KS) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) came together and created a bill called the Health Insurance Reform Act of 1995 or more commonly known as the Kassebaum-Kennedy Bill. This bill was stalled despite making it out of the Senate. Undeterred by this, Clinton pushed harder for his ambitions and eventually in 1996 after the State of the Union address, there was some headway as it resulted in bipartisan cooperation. After much debate and negotiation, there was a shift in momentum once a “compromise between Kennedy and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer” was accepted after alterations were made of the original Kassebaum-Kennedy Bill. Soon after this, the bill was signed into law by President Clinton and was named the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
