MRS CLINTON DEFINES PREEXISTING CONDITION

[From the Boston Globe, 10/13/93, reprinted without permission]

John and Lorena Bobbitt have won celebrity for the marital fight in
which Mrs. Bobbitt cut off Mr. Bobbitt's penis.  Bobbitt's organ was
reattached by skillful microsurgery, but until the Washington Post's
Al Kamen dug up this exchange, neither Bobbitt nor the nation knew
just how high up the interest in the Virginia case ranged.

According to Kamen, when the senior White House staff joined
President Clinton in the Oval Office recently to discuss the
administrations's health care proposal, Vice Pressident Al Gore
asked: "Mr. President, will the operation be covered?"

"What?" Clinton asked.

"You know, the operation," Gore said.

"What are you talking about, Al?" the president asked.

"You know, the, ah, penile reattachment," Gore said, belying with his
deadpan a reputation for humorlessness.

"I'll check," Clinton chuckled, and picked up the phone.  "Honey?" he
asked, explaining Gore's question and then holding up the receiver so
that the others in the room could hear Hillary Rodham Clinton's
laughter. 

The First Lady concluded that because Bobbitt could argue that having
a penis was a preexisting condition, it was indeed covered by the
plan as corrective surgery.