White House documents made public last week suggest that the Clinton health- care plan was in trouble from the start, even in the eyes of its designers. In a search for hidden clues about what went wrong, a team of TIME correspondents spent more than 100 hours sifting through 250 boxes of papers, memos and other documents created by Ira Magaziner's secretive health-care working group. Some highlights:
The Start-Up Memo. Magaziner, the reform architect, knew reform would be an uphill struggle. In his initial memo to Mrs. Clinton, dated Jan. 26, 1993, he listed "likely criticisms" that the plan would generate:...