Hillary unveils health care plan

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is unveiling a plan that would make it mandatory for all Americans to purchase private health insurance.  It would also use government subsidies to reduce the cost and pay for those who could not afford it.  She will push for this plan if she becomes president:

With a price tag of about $110 billion a year, Clinton's AmericanHealth Choices Plan represents her first major effort to achieveuniversal health coverage since 1994, when the plan she authored duringher husband's first term collapsed.

"It puts the consumer in the driver's seat by offering more choices andlowering costs," said Neera Tanden, Clinton's top policy advisor.

"If you like the plan you have, you keep it. If you're one of tens ofmillions of Americans without coverage or don't like the coverage youhave, you will have a choice of plans to pick from and you'll get taxcredits to help pay for it."

In many ways, the plan is both progressive and corporate-driven.

On one hand, when you provide preventive health care to everyone, especially those below the poverty line, you lessen the likelihood that they will require emergency surgery down the road, which you and I end up paying for.  We have an invested interest in seeing that all children are immunized and receive routine physicals, which would help lower the cost of health care in the long run.

On the other side of things, her plan is exactly what insurance companies want.  Forcing everyone to get insurance would be a blessing for the insurance companies.  During the 2006 election cycle, Hillary Clinton was the number two recipient of donations from the health care industry.  While John Edwards' health care plan also makes health insurance mandatory, Barack Obama's plan does not.

Comments

[granny]

Boy, I sure think I smell a rat!

Nothing about that idea feels right to me.

You'll pay every extra penny "credited" to your taxes to an accountant to try to unravel the IRS rules & directions, OR...
more to the point in terms of the poor, those who can't afford the accountant will just go to a tax-hack outfit, that claims so little of what you might actually have coming to you that they can "promise" they'll go to court with you if you get "audited".

This really stinks!

[Chris Huston]

It sounds like the plan has many flaws that would need to be addressed to make sure new evils are not simply replacing old ones.

This sort of half measure makes sense considering Hillary's failure to get her healthcare plans enacted earlier. She is of the opinion that doing too much too fast invites backlash and causes no progress at all and there is a great deal of merit in that opinion.

Requiring all to get insurance is good overall. The major issue will be making sure the insurance companies make their coverage more affordable, rather than just having the government make up the difference for them, which could become the healthcare equivalent of war profiteering.

[nytexan]

I am a big fan for everyone having health care. However, with all the contributions Clinton gets from the health care industry and her friendly relationship, I can't imagine that she didn't consult with them before she published her plan.

I just can't get my brain around
Hillary = trust

[ted K]

God help us all if the Battle Axis of Evil is elected President.

You think the price tag is gonna stop at $100 bil a year?

We currently spend over $600 bil on programs for the poor.

That $100 bil will easily double or triple.

So much for the Democratic fiscal responsibility!

[niggapuhleez]

I persist in believing that the USA is the greatest country on Earth (or that it at least has the potential to become that. Sadly, the "greatest" country on Earth is the ONLY industrialized nation that doesn't provide universal healthcare for her citizens.

Yes, it will have an annual cost associated with it. Yes, you'd still have plenty to complain about. But it would allow us to reclaim some of the moral authority in the world that GWB has squandered ever since 9/11!

Ted K., even a halfwit should know that Re-puke-licans are the party of fiscal responsibility! Oh yeah, that is until GWB decided to give his fat-cat pals a big handout from OUR wallets.

[ted K]

First off, great screen name you have chosen there, shows a classy mentality right off the bat.

Secondly, I agree totally that the Repubs blew their fiscal responsiblities by spending like drunken Democrats. Makes me sick that my party abandonded conservative principles and spent funds on bloated education budgets, perscription for seniors and other hand outs.
Sickens me.

And am I to understand that you WANT the Government involved in our Healthcare?
When has our government ever NOT botched programs they oversee?
They have done a bangup job in the last 40 years with the public education.
If Government admits that it will cost $100 bil, you can bet your life that it will cost 4 times as much..look how they have adjusted what the perscription drug plan will now cost!
Canadians FLOCK across our borders to get superior healthcare, that they either have to wait years for or not get at all in their country, despite what Michael Moore and his lies state and you sheep believe.
Universal health care is a bust.
Doesn't work in England either.
Any Englander that wants good health care goes private, even though he is covered from the government.

So, don't give me this garbage about our being the only industrialized country not to have universal healthcare (read socialistic medicine) moral authority, blah blah blah talk.

Polls are constantly taken across the globe conserning where people would want to live if they were allowed to go anywhere, and it is ALWAYS U.S.A. the clear majority.
How can that be if we are such jackals?

The health care system we have isn't perfect, far from it, but it is the BEST system in the World and Socializing it and giving even more entitlements via the government is going to put a HUGE burden on the backs of your kids and grandkids.

as you state..even a half-wit should be able to smell the stench of Hillary's plan.
Why did her plan go down in flames when Bill was Pres?

puhleez..do some research, get "edumacated."

[niggapuhleez]

Ironically you mention the medicare prescription mess....the true cost of which was purposely understated in a lame attempt (by Re-puke-licans)to sell the public on the plan (another Bush falsehood)!

Yeah, America has the "best" healthcare in the world with only 2 small problems; 1) we pay twice as much for it as anybody else does; and 2) less than 2/3 of us have coverage. Now THAT'S a GREAT country!

You know nothing about teh reality of England, Canada, or all those other places you're happy to talk through your backside about!

I mentioned the "garbage about our being the only industrialized country not to have universal healthcare (read socialistic medicine) moral authority, blah blah blah talk" in an attempt to appeal to your humanity. I hoped you might want something better for others, including your kids! This was based on my presumption that you're a Christian....my mistake!

If you think you've avoided the "HUGE burden on the backs of your kids and grandkids" then you haven't a clue about the Bush deficits from the war, taxcuts for the rich, etc. etc. etc.

Finally, and for your edification only, I will share some "edumacation" with you, Hillary-care went down in flames because it was conceived and rolled out with inadequate public input and debate! You are obviously a product of those lazy, no-account American public schools!

[Chris Huston]

The sad truth is our current healthcare system is making US companies lose to foreign ones, because foreign companies, from nations with nationalized health care, don't have to provide any health insurance to their employees.

As for an example of something the government hasn't botched:
Social Security payments always arrive to every recipient on the same day each month year after year.

Our education system is far better now than it was 40 years ago and people who like to believe that there was some great time of educational enlightenment that's been removed are kidding themselves.

As for the theory that everything a government tries being botched and inefficient and everything a business does efficient and benefiting the consumer, I can only point to contracts in Iraq. Government is efficient and run well when people make it do so.

Would you wish to privatize the police? Firemen? Road construction? Why would you wish to privatize your doctor if not your police?

[ted K]

Hmmmm I have relatives in England, so I think I know something about that healthcare system.
Apparently my "backside" knows more than your "frontside."

I also have searched into the Valhalla of Canuck health care and found that it is not very rosey, thus my comments about them crossing for our healthcare, which happens and happens often.

As far as my faith, I am Christian and my children are taught more along the lines of: if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime.

I find it far more helpful to help a person better themselves, pull themselves up by their bootstraps if you wil,l then to give them an enormous safety net where they are entitled to something.

Tax cuts help all those paying taxes, not just the rich.
and I will go one further saying that Tax cuts that the rich get, HELP the lower income brackets in that jobs are created from these horrible capital rich pigs who got a tax cut, more money is spent by them on products they buy, because they have more discretionary income.
More money is given to charity (proven fact after tax cuts are made).
It is a trickle down theory.
Ronald Reagan was right.

Hillarycare went down because it was a big bloated 1/7 of our economy BEAST and it would have FORCED doctors into specilization in what the great need was at the time, not what the doctor wanted to practice.
Sounds like a system I would want..a doctor working on me that really has no love for his field of practice.
I have no desire to get the inefficient government involved in my health. They botch everything why would you want them in socialized medicine?
I would have thought then, that you would have LOVED the perscription drug bill, being you are a lefty.. hell the Dems in office said it didn't go far enough.
Then there was that Education bill that Kennedy helped write and turned around to say it wasn't enough either.

[ted K]

Social Security is a total botch!
The government spends Social Security because it goes into a general fund and our representatives love to spend!
Why do you think there is impending doom when the Boomers reach that magical age?
Oh, but privatising 2% would be evil and destroy all the old people!

Our education system is Horrible, Other countries that were behind us 40 yrs ago, score better across the board then does our public education system.
If the public education system is so damned good, how come the vast majority of Senators kids go to private schools?.. probably the majority of the House too.

In regards to:
"Would you wish to privatize the police? Firemen? Road construction?"

THe Military, police and fireman being part of government, sure makes sense, I am not saying government out of EVERYTHING.
There are already private ambulance companies.
AND HELL YES, Privatize road construction and freeways, that is the way it used to be done and it was done under budget and on time.
The private sector and competition will always outperform Government.
The private sector does it better, more efficiently and at less cost then Government ever could, that is why our country is great.
Free enterprise.
If you don't think so, just open up the school voucher system and see how that makes public schools perform better or be closed.
It is working incredibly well in Milwaukee and they are using vouchers In D.C.

Why do you want government involved in your lives so much?