In the Washington Post today, Abigail Trafford succinctly describes the Obama
Administrations efforts to avoid the Clinton's mistakes.  While the Clintons tried to control all aspects of their reform proposal, Obama turned to Congress while cutting deals with influential groups that helped kill the Clinton proposal.  For a more in depth review of the Clinton efforts, I recommend the remarkably prescient book by Wash Post reporters Broder and Johnson from the mid 1990s-- The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point