Clinton unveils $110-billion universal health plan

[Soldier4Christ]

Clinton unveils $110-billion universal health plan

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday offered a sweeping health care reform plan to ensure coverage for all Americans with federal assistance to help defray the cost.

Thirteen years after her first effort was abandoned - but saying she still bore the scars from that failure, Clinton described her new plan as necessary to address the crisis of some 47 million uninsured.

"I believe everyone - every man, woman and child - should have quality, affordable health care in America," the New York senator told an audience in Iowa. She vowed to accomplish the goal in her first term.

Her original plan was an unprecedented initiative for a first lady. This time, she is offering a $110 billion a year program as a candidate for the presidency, in the leadoff state that is her toughest battleground. The health care plan came late in her primary campaign, after several rivals had already described their visions.

"Perhaps more than anybody else I know just how hard this fight will be," Clinton said.

Dismissing the inevitable Republican criticism, Clinton admonished the crowd. "I know my Republican opponents will try to equate health care for all Americans with government-run health care. Don't let them fool us again. This is not government-run."

Clinton says she has learned from the 1990s experience, which almost derailed Bill Clinton's presidency and helped put Republicans in control of Congress for years to come. Aides say she has jettisoned the complexity and uncertainty of the last effort in favor of a plan that stresses simplicity, cost control and consumer choice.

The centerpiece of Clinton's "American Health Choices Plan" is the so-called "individual mandate," requiring everyone to have health insurance - just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Rival John Edwards has also offered a plan that includes an individual mandate, while the proposal outlined by Barack Obama does not.

The Democratic presidential contenders have been united in advocating universal coverage. They have parted ways on certain specifics, including the individual mandate, which has detractors from both ends of the political spectrum.

Republican skeptics say it would be too invasive and would restrict personal freedom and choice. Liberal Democrats have expressed concern that such a mandate would be too financially burdensome for lower-income individuals and families - a concern shared by Obama, who has said individuals cannot be forced to purchase insurance until the cost of coverage is substantially reduced.

Aides said Clinton believes that an individual mandate is the only way to achieve health care for all. A key component of her plan would be a federal tax subsidy to help individuals pay for coverage.

Clinton's plan builds on the existing employer-based system of coverage. People who receive insurance through the workplace could continue to do so; businesses, in turn, would be required to offer insurance to employees, or contribute to a government-run pool that would help pay for those not covered. Clinton would also offer a tax subsidy to small businesses to help them afford the cost of providing coverage to their workers.

For individuals and families who are not covered by employers or whose employer-based coverage is inadequate, Clinton would offer expanded versions of two existing government programs: Medicare, and the health insurance plan currently offered to federal employees. Consumers could choose between either government-run program, but aides stress that no new federal bureaucracy would be created under the Clinton plan.

Clinton proposed several specific measures to pay for her plan, including an end to some of the Bush-era tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 per year. Edwards has vowed to completely repeal the tax cuts for high earners to pay for the cost of his plan, estimated at $90 billion-$120 billion per year, while Obama would pay for his plan in part by letting the tax cuts expire in 2010.

In response, Obama said Clinton's plan is similar to one he proposed in the spring, "though my universal health care plan would go further in reducing the punishing cost of health care than any other proposal that's been offered in this campaign."

He took another swipe at the Clinton administration's closed-door sessions on health care in the 1990s, saying "the real key to passing any health care reform is the ability to bring people together in an open, transparent process that builds a broad consensus for change."

Other Democratic rivals were swift in their criticism.

Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said, "If universal health care plans could have gotten us health care, we would have gotten it a long time ago," while Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd said, "To ensure all Americans have affordable health care will take more than leadership that simply knows how to fight."

Added John Edwards: "If you're going to negotiate universal health care with the same powerful interests that defeated it before, your proposal isn't a plan, it's a starting point." Edwards said on his first day in office he will submit legislation that would pull health insurance for the president, members of Congress and all political appointees unless they pass universal health care within six months.

Republican Mitt Romney, in New York City for a fundraising stop, criticized Clinton's proposal, saying, "'Hillary care' continues to be bad medicine ... in her plan, we have Washington-managed health care. Fundamentally, she takes her inspiration from European bureaucracies."

The plan that Romney helped institute while governor of Massachusetts requires the same individual insurance mandate as Clinton's and uses state subsidies to help reduce the cost of private coverage. Since then, Romney has said he would leave it up to the states to decide whether they supported such a mandate.

Said Republican Rudy Giuliani's campaign: "Senator Clinton's latest health scheme includes more government mandates, expensive federal subsidies and more big bureaucracy - in short, prescription for an increase in wait times, a decrease in patient care and tax hikes to pay for it all."

[Brother Jerry]

Ok in a nutshell for those that may be reading this and thinking that a plan like this would be really good for those that do not have or cannot afford insurance.

Facts:
1) The government is incredibly inefficient when it comes to handling money.
2) The government is incredibly slow when it comes to processing anything
3) The government is incredibly inefficient when it comes to handling money.

So now what Hillary would like is to mandate that employers must offer some sort of insurance.  If they do not offer insurance directly then they must contribute to the Gment pool of money to help cover the cost.  Knowing that the gment is slow to guage pricing and cost of living and things of that nature the insurance industry will quickly out pace the g'ment as far as cost is concerned.  So it will not be long that it will be cheaper for companies to just contribute to the pool rather than deal with Blue Cross or whomever.

So now because medical expenses have gone up and the gment controlled pool of money has not gone up an equal amount then we shall begin to run into shortages.  And where are we going to make up that difference....taxes...we will have to take up more taxes to make up the difference in the cost. 

A big Band aid

They are not doing anything to correct the problem, only to band aid the problem.  What is the problem?

Problem 1:
We have people without insurance.
From here we have to ask a couple of questions.  Can we get everyone on insurance?  And what is an acceptable amount of uninsured. 
The answer to the first part of that is no.  We cannot get everyone on insurance...there will always be uninsured.  We cannot get rid of the unemployed no matter how much we try.  The same will be true of the uninsured.

Problem 2:
We have people without insurance.
Yea same as above...different angle.  Why do people not have insurance.  The Dems would like you to think it is because they cannot afford it.  And the fix would be to provide them cost effective or subsidized insurance paid for by those who can afford insurance.

Why can they not afford insurance?
They are nto making enough money - Off the cuff answer is raise the minimum wage...that should fix it...if we can get everyone's base salary increased then they should be able to afford insurance...but then they do not realize that if we raise the minimum wage then the baseline cost of products across the board goes up.  We could fix that by simply letting illegals come into the country and work for nothing. 
Insurance is too expensive - Ok why is it too expensive? 
It is too expensive because medical costs have gone up too high. - OK why have they gone up too high?
Medical expenses have gone up to high.  Why? Malpractice insurance has gone up dramatically. 
Why have malpractice suits gone up?  - Lawsuits for crazy amounts of money.
Why are there lawsuits for crazy amounts?  Because lawyers are lawsuit happy to blame everyone else for their clients problems.

What it boils down to is simple.  If we can reduce the cost of medical care then we get a vast majority of people on insurance.  Lawyers have made it incredibly expensive to stay in practice.  People do not want to take responsibility for themselves and they want to blame everyone.  There are bogus malpractice suits out there.  Those that if the person had taken the time to do thier research, gotten a second opinion, or something....ANYTHING then they would not have been in the boat they are in.  No one said doctors are perfect.  They can make mistakes.  And when they do they should be punished for them.  But lawyers want to make them guilty of anything and the client guilty of nothing but "trusting" their doctor. 

This whole thesis gets very in depth but the jist of it is that Lawyers are crooks that invented the next worst thing and that is insurance reps.  Insurance is a scam that man we thought we needed, but do not.  We got along real good without for many many years....doctors were still some of the wealthiest men around, and they sometimes got paid in chickens.  And that was done without insurance.

[Soldier4Christ]

Something that you didn't mention in your comments of the government handling money. It wouldn't long before the government would start appropriating money from the pool to go to places other than where it originally is supposed to go to. In this case the insurance. We already see this being done with Soc Sec and now it is being done with Medi-Care. We all know what this is doing to those two programs.

It is easy to misappropriate funds and to spend more of it when it isn't your own money.

[Brother Jerry]

Yeah that was part of the inefficiency...if they could handle money efficiently then they would not have to borrow from Peter to pay Paul sort of thing.

[islandboy]

The above posts pretty much said it in a nutshell. The government is not a reliable source for healthcare. Anyone wishing to see how government sponsored health care works, go on down to your local health clinic. In Florida, we have the Family Health Center. There are too many patients and to few doctors. And the doctors work on a rotation base. Just when you get used to a doctor they leave to go to another clinic somewhere in the US or overseas. The pay is low and the hours are long. You get some good doctor's and some poor excuses for doctors.
If they would just control the insurance company's and mandate lower medical prices, we all might be able to afford medical care.