Hillary Clinton's health care plan

Great Debates
1

Back in 1993, Hillary Clinton chaired the committee that came out with a health care reform package – not “socialized medicine” by British or even Canadian standards, but a remarkably tepid “managed care” proposal that would have left the private health insurance industry substantially intact (exactly what was wrong with it, IMO). Nevertheless, the Pubs scuttled it – partly for ideological reasons, partly in service to those who butter their bread, and partly, I’m sure, out of an evil determination to deny the Clinton Administration anything that might be considered a success.

Now she’s trying again, making a new health care plan a centerpiece of her own presidential campaign, and promising to pay for it by repealing W’s tax cuts. Summary of the plan here.

  1. How is this plan better or worse than the 1993 plan?

  2. How will it play politically? Has the public mood grown more accepting of the idea?

2

I thought this would be a good place to link to this cartoon.

3

I read the plan (on her website) and it’s definitely an improvement of the health care that is currently in the United States. She is also planning to pay for it by rolling back to Bush tax cuts to pre-Bush levels and forcing the pharmaceutical companies to charge sensible prices for their product. It’s genius in an odd sort of way because she has managed to account for 110 Billion dollars without directly raising taxes at all.

There is one ambiguity in her plan that bothers me: She says that health care premiums will be a fair percentage of one’s income but doesn’t give any example. I am, for example, in an unfortunate situation where I have a master’s degree and am making slightly less than $800 dollars a month doing adjunct work. I have no health insurance and a pre-existing condition that will cost me $150 a month get the medication I need. My question to Hillary would be, “When you say ‘fair percentage of income’ how much are we talking about?”
I also agree her assertion that it is ridiculous that we have no preventative care. The insurance company won’t pay for a nicotine patch to help individuals quit smoking but will pay for costlly operations that are the direct result of smoking. The same goes for diabetes where insurance companies won’t pay for blood monitoring equipment or visits to a podiatrist, but will pay for a diabetic to get their foot chopped off. No matter what aisle one stands on the issue of health care, one would be hard-pressed to not acknowledge the backwardness of preventative care in America.
I am also very frustrated and disappointed with the Republican candidates who have done nothing but smear this plan and have not offered one sentence on how they will address the health care problem in the United States if they were President. It would be useful and fruitful if Republicans would unveil their own health care plans so the public can critique and compare them with the Democrats.

  • Honesty
4

[QUOTE=Honesty]
I read the plan (on her website) and it’s definitely an improvement of the health care that is currently in the United States. She is also planning to pay for it by rolling back to Bush tax cuts to pre-Bush levels and forcing the pharmaceutical companies to charge sensible prices for their product. It’s genius in an odd sort of way because she has managed to account for 110 Billion dollars without directly raising taxes at all.
[/QUOTE]

Repealing a tax cut IS raising taxes.

Price Controls on pharma are also a form of raising taxes.

[QUOTE=Honesty]
There is one ambiguity in her plan that bothers me: She says that health care premiums will be a fair percentage of one’s income but doesn’t give any example. I am, for example, in an unfortunate situation where I have a master’s degree and am making slightly less than $800 dollars a month doing adjunct work. I have no health insurance and a pre-existing condition that will cost me $150 a month get the medication I need. My question to Hillary would be, “When you say ‘fair percentage of income’ how much are we talking about?”
[/QUOTE]

It will be whatever she finds is necessary to charge for the system to balance. That is an ambiguous statement and she should be called on it.

[QUOTE=Honesty]
I also agree her assertion that it is ridiculous that we have no preventative care. The insurance company won’t pay for a nicotine patch to help individuals quit smoking but will pay for costlly operations that are the direct result of smoking. The same goes for diabetes where insurance companies won’t pay for blood monitoring equipment or visits to a podiatrist, but will pay for a diabetic to get their foot chopped off. No matter what aisle one stands on the issue of health care, one would be hard-pressed to not acknowledge the backwardness of preventative care in America.

[/QUOTE]

Very true, but there are many companies that pay for preventive care because they have found that it pays off. The problem with companies paying for preventive care is that employees do not stick around long enough for it to always pay off. This is the problem with our current employer cent

[QUOTE=Honesty]
I am also very frustrated and disappointed with the Republican candidates who have done nothing but smear this plan and have not offered one sentence on how they will address the health care problem in the United States if they were President. It would be useful and fruitful if Republicans would unveil their own health care plans so the public can critique and compare them with the Democrats.

  • Honesty
    [/QUOTE]

Gee, like Mitt Romney - the only person around to actually get a coverage model enacted?

5

[QUOTE=Honesty]
There is one ambiguity in her plan that bothers me: She says that health care premiums will be a fair percentage of one’s income but doesn’t give any example. I am, for example, in an unfortunate situation where I have a master’s degree and am making slightly less than $800 dollars a month doing adjunct work. I have no health insurance and a pre-existing condition that will cost me $150 a month get the medication I need. My question to Hillary would be, “When you say ‘fair percentage of income’ how much are we talking about?”
[/QUOTE]
Germany has a system that matches the general description in the article. Of course it depends on many details how close the proposed system actually is. Ninety percent of the German population are covered by the following system:

The cost is about 12-16% of your gross income up to EUR 47 250 (ca. $ 66 500) a year. (Technically about half of that is paid by you and the rest by your employer but of course it’s all money that you cost your employer and you can’t keep.)

Pre-existing conditions don’t matter, an insurance that is part of this system can’t refuse you.

There are minor co-payments but in the worst case the sum is capped at 2% of your income within one year (1% for those with chronical illnesses)

This covers not only you but also your spouse and minor children as long as they don’t have their own non-trivial income (in that case they need a policy of their own.)

6

I think she is brave raising this issue. I see no way this hurts her chances in the primaries where she has already got a large lead over Obama.

Her plan looks a lot better than doing nothing. I like her plan to pay fro it by rolling back the fiscally irresponsible Bush tax cuts. I am still not sure we can afford this is she does not extract us from Iraq quickly.

I am not sure this plan will help her in the general election. I hope I am wrong, but it seems as if too many voters are not in favor of more government health care. I would like to see some polls on this issue over the next two months.

Jim

7

You mean Edwards’s plan?

And brave? If she were brave she’d be talking about single payer or some such. That would take some ovaries. Of course, one may argue that we can’t simply take the plunge, there has to be a transition period, and I may agree – but this all looks pretty tepid to me and Mrs. Clinton is the last person I’d expect to do anything which could in any way threaten the bottom line of the insurance companies and their various parasites. This will make all the coming attacks all the stranger. But still, she should be applauded – a small fix is still a fix, and it means reducing suffering and death.

Yes, you are very wrong. The American population has wanted major changes in the healthcare system for about 30 years, with majorities wanting it nationalized. See here or here for starters. That’s pretty amazing when you think about it, considering the huge amount of propaganda which comes down the pike from the corporate media, the avalanche of “scary” phrases like “government run healthcare” (the good old “don’t let the government touch my medicare” line) or “socialized medicine” or “waiting lists” (we sure don’t have any of those, nope) or “quotas,” etc.

As for this plan in particular, I think it will end up being fairly popular and if Mrs. Clinton can somehow craft her image into being a health care reformer in the mind of the public at large then it’ll be a landslide unless the GOP can somehow get their own plan out there (Romney?).

Of course, even if she is elected the Congress will have to be friendly to this plan, no? Sounds like a potential wrench in the works.

Oh dear…

8

[QUOTE=marshmallow]
Of course, even if she is elected the Congress will have to be friendly to this plan, no? Sounds like a potential wrench in the works.
[/QUOTE]

The Dems should be favorable, and I very much doubt the Pubs have a snowball’s chance of taking back Congress in 2008.

9

[QUOTE=marshmallow]
You mean Edwards’s plan?

And brave? If she were brave she’d be talking about single payer or some such. That would take some ovaries. Of course, one may argue that we can’t simply take the plunge, there has to be a transition period, and I may agree – but this all looks pretty tepid to me and Mrs. Clinton is the last person I’d expect to do anything which could in any way threaten the bottom line of the insurance companies and their various parasites. This will make all the coming attacks all the stranger. But still, she should be applauded – a small fix is still a fix, and it means reducing suffering and death.

Yes, you are very wrong. The American population has wanted major changes in the healthcare system for about 30 years, with majorities wanting it nationalized. See here or here for starters. That’s pretty amazing when you think about it, considering the huge amount of propaganda which comes down the pike from the corporate media, the avalanche of “scary” phrases like “government run healthcare” (the good old “don’t let the government touch my medicare” line) or “socialized medicine” or “waiting lists” (we sure don’t have any of those, nope) or “quotas,” etc.

As for this plan in particular, I think it will end up being fairly popular and if Mrs. Clinton can somehow craft her image into being a health care reformer in the mind of the public at large then it’ll be a landslide unless the GOP can somehow get their own plan out there (Romney?).

Of course, even if she is elected the Congress will have to be friendly to this plan, no? Sounds like a potential wrench in the works.
Oh dear…
[/QUOTE]

Thank you oh so much for parsing my post apart. It is such a wonderful thing, especially when you remove the gist and drift of my post.

If it is Edward’s plan why nail me and neither the article or the prior posters? BTW: Cite, you know just to clear up whose plan it is.

What is up with the “Oh dear…”, the Bush tax cuts should never have happened, no sane individual would go to war and cut taxes at the same time. Our debt is up very high and if she does not pull us out of Iraq quickly that $110 billion would be more responsibly spent on offsetting the very high and ongoing cost of the Iraq stupidity.

Or does debt and deficit spending not matter?

Jim

10

I think it’s it’s the best we can hope for right now. I’d love to see a single payer system, but if Clinton proposed it right now, she would never get elected. This plan is enough of a compromise to make it palatable to some republicans, and it’s a step in the right direction toward single payer, which is not going to happen overnight.

11

Edwards’ plan is very similar – but he can’t make this issue his the way Hillary can; she has a 14-year head start.

Same applies to Obama.

12

[QUOTE=Algher]
Gee, like Mitt Romney - the only person around to actually get a coverage model enacted?
[/QUOTE]

[shrug] That was then, this is now.

13

Since the Clinton Administration was last in the big time, American public oppinion has radically shifted to the left, in terms of healthcare at least, in response to the overwalming rise in republicanism. What this means is that, for the first time (in a long time) in American History, Universal healthcare reform is not only palitable to the majority of the voters, it’s a real vote winner.
Massive economic and of course social benefits are to be reaped from such a system, which with the rise of genetic testing (going to be cheaper than $100 a test within a decade) will lead to a crash in the insurence firms (which are betting firsm in reality, relying as they do on probablty of you gettin ill, which the genetic info would crash by showing weather or not, and when, you’d get an illness, meaning only those with an inclination to get ill would bother with it).
Shame Hillary’s wimping out on full universal medical care, but I hope she follows through on at least SOME health reforms to bring the poor into the hospitals.

14

[QUOTE=Supirior Savior]
Since the Clinton Administration was last in the big time, American public oppinion has radically shifted to the left, in terms of healthcare at least, in response to the overwalming rise in republicanism. What this means is that, for the first time (in a long time) in American History, Universal healthcare reform is not only palitable to the majority of the voters, it’s a real vote winner.
Massive economic and of course social benefits are to be reaped from such a system, which with the rise of genetic testing (going to be cheaper than $100 a test within a decade) will lead to a crash in the insurence firms (which are betting firsm in reality, relying as they do on probablty of you gettin ill, which the genetic info would crash by showing weather or not, and when, you’d get an illness, meaning only those with an inclination to get ill would bother with it).
Shame Hillary’s wimping out on full universal medical care, but I hope she follows through on at least SOME health reforms to bring the poor into the hospitals.
[/QUOTE]

Sorry, you lost me in the middle there. The genetic testing part. maybe you could expand and pretend some of us have no clue what you are talking about. :wink:

15

Um…?:confused:
If this is such a great plan, why doesn’t she introduce it now? She is a U.S. senator after all, and the Dems do control both houses of Congress. Why wait until after January of 2009?

16

[QUOTE=pkbites]
Um…?:confused:
If this is such a great plan, why doesn’t she introduce it now? She is a U.S. senator after all, and the Dems do control both houses of Congress. Why wait until after January of 2009?
[/QUOTE]

It would never get signed into law anyway. The President can still veto and there is no where near enough votes to override the veto.

Jim

17

The only mud that can be thrown at Hillary will be recycled mud from days-gone-by such as HillaryCare. She had to raise the issue to prevent the opposition from throwing the HillaryCare Boogerman at her and making it look like she had to defensively scramble for a response.

18

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
It would never get signed into law anyway. The President can still veto and there is no where near enough votes to override the veto.

[/QUOTE]

So what? Pass the bill, let Bush veto it, then use that to show what dicks the Pubs are about health care.

Of course, I personally don’t want it passed nor signed into law. I do, however, want to point out how full of shit Hillary is, though.

19

[QUOTE=pkbites]
So what? Pass the bill, let Bush veto it, then use that to show what dicks the Pubs are about health care.

Of course, I personally don’t want it passed nor signed into law. I do, however, want to point out how full of shit Hillary is, though.
[/QUOTE]

Well at least you admit it. :wink:

Actually the Republicans have been loud enough denouncing her plan and making fun of HRC, that I thought they already showed what dicks they are about health care.

Why is she full of shit for not wasting her time on it now instead of promising it if she gets elected? By politicians standards, that is nearly honest dealings.

Jim

20

[QUOTE=pkbites]
Um…?:confused:
If this is such a great plan, why doesn’t she introduce it now? She is a U.S. senator after all, and the Dems do control both houses of Congress. Why wait until after January of 2009?
[/QUOTE]

Because it’s worth more to her as a presidential campaign issue than as an accomplishment on her resume, perhaps? And, as pointed out, Bush would veto it anyway. (Especially as rolling back his tax cuts is part of the plan.)