Democratic Presidential Candidate Health Care Plans In A Nutshell

zulchzulu

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Tue Sep-18-07 12:14 PM
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Democratic Presidential Candidate Health Care Plans In A Nutshell

The New York Times has a great page on health care policies for all the Presidential candidates. I've parsed the Democratic candidates for DU:

Joseph R. Biden Jr.

http://www.joebiden.com/home

IMMEDIATELY INSURE EVERYONE UNDER 18
I would move immediately to insure all children under age 18, modernize medical records and provide catastrophic health insurance to lift the burden on the 46 million people who can't afford coverage.
-- Las Vegas Sun, March 23, 2007

WORK WITH STATES TO MOVE TOWARDS UNIVERSAL COVERAGE
I think the thing that will get us to total health coverage - health insurance for everybody the quickest - is to do what we did on welfare reform. What we did was we allowed the states considerable flexibility and leeway in reorganizing the system and we underwrote the cost of the poor states in doing it to get work programs going. Do the same exact thing with health care. You have a dozen states, including big ones, that are now passing legislation requiring universal insurance, just like liability insurance. Once you get to a critical mass of 30 to 35 states, you've established a national consensus. Cherry-pick those elements of the plans. Maybe even give them localized flavor rather than one simple standard that exists that require that there be total complete coverage across the board.
-- In New Hampshire, April 14, 2007

END WAR IN IRAQ; ROLL BACK PRESIDENT BUSH'S TAX CUTS FOR THE HIGHEST EARNERS
The first two things we could do and we could do it without having to fundamentally change anything other than the president's unneeded tax cut for people making an average of $1.43 million dollars a year in the top one percent.
-- In Nevada, April 2007
Eliminate the break for investment on dividends, which is $195 billion. For $26 billion a year, I can insure every single solitary child under the age of 18 in the United States. You need start-up dollars. The place I'd start off with is somewhere over $220 billion a year by the tax cuts and ending the war.
-- On NBC's "Meet the Press," April 2007

Hillary Rodham Clinton

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/

REQUIRE EVERYONE TO GET INSURANCE, SUBSIDIZED BY EMPLOYERS AND THE GOVERNMENT
I call my plan, the American Health Choices plan. ... If you have private insurance you like, nothing changes ... you can keep that insurance. ... If, however, you don't have health insurance or you don't like the insurance you have, you can choose from the same wide variety of private plans that members of Congress choose from. ... You will have access to a public plan that will provide a stable, competitive alternative to private insurance if that is your choice.

While I will be requiring all Americans to have health care, I will be calling on employers to do their part as well. ... Under my plan, large companies will be required to help pay for their employees' health care. Those that do so can simply maintain their current policy that they choose. Those that don't, will need to contribute towards the cost of covering their employees on a sliding scale based on their size and average wages. ... We won't require small businesses to cover employees. Instead we will provide tax credits to ensure that many of them do. ... The government will provide tax-credits to insure that every single American can afford health insurance.
-- In Des Moines, Sept. 17, 2007

� More Details (HillaryClinton.com)

ROLL BACK PRESIDENT BUSH'S TAX CUTS FOR PEOPLE EARNING OVER $250,000 AND BY SAVINGS IN THE EXISTING HEALTH CARE SYSTEM
I won't pay for it by pouring money into a broken system. I won't pay for it by raising taxes on middle class families who are already struggling with rising costs and stagnant wages. Instead, I'll pay for part of it by implementing the cost saving measures I outlined in May. And I will pay for some of it by rolling back part of President Bush's fiscally irresponsible tax breaks for the highest income Americans. And I'll pay for some of it by limiting the tax breaks for people making over $250,000 a year to the same level that ordinary, middle class Americans get.
-- In Des Moines, Sept. 17, 2007

HAS OUTLINED A SEVEN-POINT PLAN TO CONTROL COST
- Ensure better preventative care
- Modernize record-keeping
- Streamline care for the chronically ill
- Create large insurance pools
- Start a "Best Practices Institute" to finance research
- Control prescription drug costs
- Revise medical malpractice system
-- At George Washington University, May 24, 2007

Chris Dodd

http://www.chrisdodd.com/home

HAS PLEDGED UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, SUBSIDIZED BY EMPLOYERS AND THE GOVERNMENT
Everyone participates, everyone benefits. All the stakeholders -- individuals, employers, the government -- are involved in coming up with a system here that would make it possible to reduce those numbers of 47 million of our fellow citizens who have no health care to make sure they'll be included.
- Second is prevention alone. Minimum we try to do is see to it to reduce the cost by stopping people from getting ill in the first place.
- Thirdly is building upon the good things we've done already: Forty years of Medicaid and Medicare. I would extend Medicaid to poorer families, 100 percent of poverty; the ones with children, 300 percent of poverty.
- Last is the fourth principle, dealing with technology. Some $80 or $90 billion could be saved, not to mention the morbidity rates by doing a far better job and utilizing the technology that exists today.
-- Presidential Forum on Health Care, March 27, 2007

END WAR IN IRAQ; ROLL BACK PRESIDENT BUSH'S TAX CUTS FOR THE HIGHEST EARNERS
If you get rid of these permanent tax cuts to the top one percent of income earners, get the war ended in Iraq that we're spending $2 million a week, $8 million a month, we can provide the resources to really move in this direction. So I would make it a top priority in my administration. I wouldn't want to put a time frame on it because I think it's too important, but for us to get there as soon as possible.
-- Presidential Forum on Health Care, March 27, 2007

John Edwards

http://johnedwards.com/

REQUIRE EVERYONE TO GET INSURANCE, SUBSIDIZED BY EMPLOYERS AND THE GOVERNMENT
What we're going to do is cover every single American, including the 47 million who don't have coverage. We're going to bring down costs for everybody. And for most Americans, we're going to help them pay the cost. It's based on a concept of shared responsibility. In the case of employers, we're going to ask them to do more to either insure all their employees or to contribute to their being insured. The government will help subsidize the health care and create health care markets so we have more competition and deal with issues like preventative care, mental health care, to make sure those kind of things -- chronic care -- are, in fact, being done. And then, finally, for individuals, we're going to make sure they have insurance. They have to have insurance so that everybody has health insurance.
-- On NBC's "Meet the Press," Feb. 4, 2007

� More Details (JohnEdwards.com)

ROLL BACK PRESIDENT BUSH'S TAX CUTS FOR THE HIGHEST EARNERS
The tax cuts that George Bush gave to people who make over $200,000 a year will have to go away to pay for my health care plan. My universal health care plan costs 90- to $120 billion a year. I do not believe, having spent a lot of time on this, that you can achieve universal health care without--without finding a revenue source, and that's my revenue source.
-- Face the Nation, Feb.25, 2007

Mike Gravel

http://www.gravel2008.us/

ISSUE VOUCHERS TO EVERYONE BASED ON THEIR PROJECTED NEEDS
Under the plan we would issue vouchers to every single American. And the vouchers, you don't pay for them, they're issued to you. You sign up every year for them. And the vouchers will have a very modest co-pay, a very modest deductible, but that's it. Everybody gets the same product universally in the United States of America. And then if you want more than the product you got, you pay for it.
The vouchers are set up for risk on an individual basis, not on a collective this fits all, because if you're young, you probably don't have a cost of more than $3,000. When you're my age, it could be $150,000-$180,000 in one year. One of the facets of the plan would be to keep in place Medicare and Medicaid and phase them out over time. Because plans to put everybody on Medicare aren't going to fly financially and just can't be met.
-- Presidential Forum on Health Care, March 24, 2007

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WITH TAXPAYER'S MONEY; CONTROL COST BY MODERNIZING RECORDS
All Americans pay for it regardless of the system you have now but the system you're going to get, single-payer Health Care Voucher plan. There's no magic in this whole process. Somebody is going to pay. You know who pays, it's the average American, one way or the other, particularly under our present system. And so to want to trash the business community and trash our tax system, which is already corrupt, with greater corruption as a way to solve the problem is a nonstarter. The way the plan is designed, it won't raise costs, because the 30 percent that they're talking about is paper cost. If you took that and put it into some real costs in health care, we'd cover everybody without raising any costs.
-- Presidential Forum on Health Care, March 24, 2007

Dennis Kucinich

http://kucinich.us/

ESTABLISH MEDICARE FOR ALL
A not-for-profit health care system is not only possible, but H.R. 676, a bill that I introduced, and a number of Congressmen, the Conyers-Kucinich bill, actually establishes Medicare for all, a single-payer system and it's a not-for-profit system. It's time we ended this thought that health care is a privilege. It is a basic right, and it's time to end this control that insurance companies have not only over health care but over our political system. I'm talking about a real deal for the American people, a universal single-payer not-for-profit Medicare for all.
-- Presidential Forum on Health Care, March 24, 2007

REMOVE COSTS RELATED TO PRIVATE INSURERS
At least 30% of the $3.2 trillion spent annually for health care in the United States goes to the for-profit system, while 50 million Americans, many of them working, are without health insurance. About $660 billion goes for corporate profits, executive salaries, stock options, advertising, marketing, and the cost of paperwork. If we took all that money and we put it into a public health system, a national health care plan, we would have enough money to cover everything for everyone.
-- House floor, July 12, 2006

IMPLEMENT TAXES FOR THE HIGHEST EARNERS AND A PAYROLL TAX
(B) Increasing personal income taxes on the top 5 percent income earners.
(C) Instituting a modest and progressive excise tax on payroll and self-employment income.
(D) Instituting a small tax on stock and bond transactions.
-- H.R. 676

Barack Obama

http://www.barackobama.com/

REQUIRE CHILDREN TO GET INSURANCE;
AIMS FOR UNIVERSAL COVERAGE
The main disagreement with John and I is John believes that we have to have mandatory insurance for everyone in order to have universal health care. My belief is that most families want health care but they can't afford it. And so my emphasis is on driving down the costs, taking on the insurance companies, making sure that they are limited in the ability to extract profits and deny coverage -- that we make sure the drug companies have to do what's right by their patients instead of simply hoarding their profits. If we do those things then I believe that we can drive down the costs for families. In fact, we've got very conservative, credible estimates that say we can save families that do have health insurance about a thousand dollars a year, and we can also make sure that we provide coverage for everybody else. And we do provide mandatory health care for children.
-- CNN debate for Democratic candidates, June 3, 2007

� More Details (barackobama.com)

ROLL BACK PRESIDENT BUSH'S TAX CUTS FOR PEOPLE EARNING OVER $250,000
To help pay for all this, we will ask all but the smallest businesses who don't make a meaningful contribution today to the health care coverage of their employees to do so by supporting this new plan. And we'll also allow the temporary Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to expire.
-- University of Iowa, May 29, 2007

Bill Richardson

http://richardsonforpresident.com/

REQUIRE EVERYONE TO GET INSURANCE, SUBSIDIZED BY EMPLOYERS AND THE GOVERNMENT
No. 1, my plan is mandatory. You do have everybody sharing -- the employer, the employee, you have the state and the federal government. Secondly, I believe that we can have a plan where if you were satisfied with your health care plan, you can keep it. No new bureaucracy. But in addition to that, you focus on prevention. You allow everybody to get the Congressional plan that every member here has.You bring Medicare 55 and over.
-- CNN debate for Democratic candidates, June 3, 2007

Our main responsibility should be to insure all children under five. We've done that in New Mexico and we should do that nationally. Secondly, we should insure all working adults, all working families. The third phase would be the chronically unemployed. The way you do that is by improving efficiencies and costs. The way you do that is not have Medicare and Medicaid covering seniors and disabled, it should be one. We should expand the S-Chip to cover children.
-- A.F.S.C.M.E. forum, Feb. 21, 2007

FORM PARTNERSHIP WITH HEALTH CARE COMMUNITY
I would not increase taxes. I believe that, if anything, Democrats have been viewed - our solution is always to increase taxes, and we shouldn't. I don't think the solution of the Democratic Party should always be to either spend more or tax more. I believe if we have partnerships between hospitals, between communities, between the state, the federal government, and you give flexibility to the states, we can have universal health care.
-- A.F.S.C.M.E. forum, Feb. 21, 2007

More here:
http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/issues/healthcare/index.html