Hill's Group: Hillary Clinton reveals her plan to revise--not repeal or replace--Obamacare

[BlueMTexpat]

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-hillary-clinton-reveals-her-plan-obamacare-20160223-column.html

Since presidential candidate Hillary Clinton quietly updated the healthcare policy page on her campaign website over the last few days, most commentators have focused on the especially notable paragraphs stating that she will "continue to support a 'public option' — and work to build on the Affordable Care Act to make it possible."
...
Clinton's support of the public option has drawn the most attention because it revives a provision of healthcare reform that was dropped from the ACA during the drafting and debate era of 2009-2010 — to the disadvantage of the package as a whole, in the view of many reformers.

It's also Clinton's strongest counterpunch to the single-payer plan proposed by her Democratic opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an excessively expensive program that would start reform from square one and eliminate many of the cost controls written into the ACA. Along with her other proposals, it's a reproach to Republican presidential candidates whose only idea is to scrap Obamacare in its entirety, without seriously contemplating how to cover Americans in its stead. However you feel about Obamacare, the difference in their approaches is unmistakable.

As Charles Gaba notes, Clinton isn't kidding when she says she supported the public option in the past — the evidence can be found among those accursed emails of hers, which document her efforts to keep the provision in the bill. (She was acting as an outsider, as she had left the Senate to become secretary of State in January 2009.)

[Cha]

1. Thank you, Blue.. Hillary has so many good policies and plans to build on President Obama's

time in Office.

[yallerdawg]

2. The Supreme Court terminated the mandated Medicaid expansion.

Fix that, so many more are covered!

If you are eligible for tax credits covering your premiums, of course you can't afford high deductibles and co-pays. Fix that.

Let's let 'wellness programs' and 'managed care' have time to cut costs, let's work on 'prescription drug' costs, let's put in cost-controls that continue to push back against rising health care costs.

Step by step, we'll get to universal coverage, and we'll all pitch in to pay for it!

The Affordable Care Act was never meant to be the end. Just a good beginning! A practical, progressive, pragmatic beginning!

[Iliyah]

3. K & R

[RussBLib]

4. I just hope that women's health issues are front and center in this campaign

I am so tired of hearing from the GOP and how they want to kill Obamacare and how they oppose abortion in ALL cases, and how they want to kill Planned Parenthood. It's still a little hard for me to believe that half this country wants to push women back several decades, if not centuries.

I know Hillary is huge on women's health, and so is Bernie. I'm beginning to think that about the only way to thwart the rise of the fascist Trump is to have Hillary and Bernie share the ticket.

[lunamagica]

5. K&R. This is what we need