I oppose Hillarycare from the Left [View All]

[bluestateguy]

It was a bad idea in 1994, and it's an even worse idea now. Should she become president, will this be the kind of health care plan she introduces? She could not push it through a Democratic controlled Congress, and her health care task force--made up of Ivy League technocrats--could not succinctly explain it to the American people. I remember when Michael Dukakis came to my university to give a talk. He said he was so baffled by the complexity of the Clinton health care plan that he could not explain it to his graduate students in public policy.The Clintons plan maintained private insurance as the primary mechanism of coverage for most Americans, through an employer mandate, the costs of which would hurt small business, to the benefit of large corporations. Under Hillarycare, the insurance companies and HMO's would have found creative new ways to manipulate the system to their benefit once again, at the expense of customers. They have good lawyers, accountants and MBA's who know how to do this stuff for a living.

I oppose Hillarycare from the Left. I favor a single payer, Canadian style health care system that would make private insurance obsolete (though if the companies want to continue to provide an obsolete product, I certainly won't stop them). Just delete the section of Medicare that says you have to be 65 to be a beneficiary, phase in an increase over several years of the Medicare payroll tax, lift the $90,000 income limit on payroll taxes, allow everyone to pay into Medicare part B, import drugs from Canada, put price controls on drugs, but provide government grants to pharmaceutical companies to do research of new drugs. Oh, and as part of any health care reform, the government should forgive all student loan debt accrued by medical students
(or compensate private lenders who made the loans).