Hillary Clinton Genuflects to the Health Insurance Industry
Clinton Health Plan Outlined All Americans Would Be Required to Have Insurance
By Beth Fouhy Associated Press Monday, September 17, 2007; A04
DES MOINES -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's sweeping health-care proposal, which she plans to unveil today, would require every American to carry health insurance and offer federal subsidies to help reduce the cost of coverage.
The proposal, Clinton's first major effort to achieve universal health coverage since an ill-fated 1994 plan, carries a price tag of about $110 billion per year. The centerpiece of her "American Health Choices Plan" is an "individual mandate" requiring everyone to have health insurance -- just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance.
"It puts the consumer in the driver's seat by offering more choices and lowering costs," said Neera Tanden, Clinton's top policy adviser. "If you like the plan you have, you keep it. If you're one of tens of millions of Americans without coverage or don't like the coverage you have, you will have a choice of plans to pick from and you'll get tax credits to help pay for it."
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Sweeping--as in under the rug.
Helping to pay for what is increasingly unaffordable is no plan at all, except for the health insurance industry. The business plan of health 'insurers' is to deny care and 'uninsure' pre-existing conditions.
Some health 'care' plan that is. The rich don't give a shit because it doesn't affect them and the middle-class can't change jobs and still keep sick family members insured. That's become a form of insurance slavery. The poor will have what they always have had--nothing--at least nothing meaningful.
Not a single candidate has the nerve to come out in favor of single-payer national health insurance, for fear of the insurance lobby and the buggaboo of being called a supporter of socialized medicine.
Socializing is what national health care is all about. Commercializing is what private insurance is about. Take your pick--continue to have the worst health care at the highest cost in the industrialized world or stand up against the demagoguery of socialized health care.
* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Health Care, check out Opinion-Columns.com