Hillary to require health insurance for all

[Herman Munster]

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-ushill0916,0,663698.story?coll=ny_home_rail_headlines

The long-anticipated initiative has much in common with the Obama and Edwards proposals. All three plans allow individuals to choose among a wide array of private insurance plans, all would create massive "purchasing pools" of patients to drive down costs to individuals and all would prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing illnesses.

Edwards, Obama and Clinton would also pump hundreds of millions into additional funding for wellness programs, fighting chronic illnesses, improving mental health services, combating obesity and expanding free health care to more poor and working-class children.

"She first made a lot of these proposals in 1993 and they were regarded as revolutionary," said Carol McDaid, a longtime health care industry lobbyist. "Now it doesn't seem so revolutionary, it's in the mainstream."

Clinton's new proposal represents a stylistic shift from her 1993 effort than a major policy change. Back in the heady early days of the Clinton administration, she oversaw a massive Manhattan Project-style planning effort with obsessive attention to secrecy, a zeal that bordered on hubris and an obliviousness to political reality that made enemies of powerful .Democratic leaders.

One former insurance company executive recalled Clinton summoning top drug company executives to the White House for a dressing-down. "She storms into the meeting and 'The days of profiteering in the pharmaceutical industry are over!'" the lobbyist recalled. "There were no handshakes, no 'How was your flight' ... It was ugly, nasty. From that point on I knew her plan was dead."

[MannyGoldstein]

1. All Three Plans Are Intellectually Bankrupt

The only thing that's been shown to work is single-payer, aka Medicare For All. It has covered everyone and produced better outcomes at far lower costs in EVERY case it's been tried. Everything else is simply disturbing pandering to the Predator Class.

[TahitiNut]

3. Agreed. Corporate welfare in the name of universal health care. Abominable.

Absolutely anything to preserve the vast pools of financial reserves invested in corporate stock.

[regnaD kciN]

4. It shows, once again...

...what a stranglehold corporate interests have on any type of "reform," whether from the Democrats or the Republicans. Nothing but a pretty new rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

:grr:

[Maven]

5. On the other hand, it could be the best way to phase them out.

Insurance companies are making big bucks and they're not going anywhere without a fight. Instead, co-opt them and eventually make them obsolete.

Frankly, I'm unimpressed with Obama and Edwards' plans, which still require people to buy insurance on their own (oh, but they'll make sure it's more "fair" and "affordable," whatever the hell that means). Both plans look like a hodgepodge of minor modifications to the status quo with the label "universal" slapped on them. I'm looking forward to reading Clinton's plan...hopefully it will make more sense.

[Greyhound]

16. They can be wiped out with one piece of legislation, HR.626

All of the "mainstream" plans are nothing more than multi-billion dollar giveaways to one of the most heinous industries to ever curse our nation. They would simply force more people into the current system of neglect and corruption that the 50 million (a very conservative figure) of our nation's under-insured suffer with.

If you are a supporter of any of the "big three", write them and tell them you want their endorsement for HR. 626.

[Maven]

18. I agree with you, of course.

And I also support Kucinich, who co-sponsored HR 676 as you know. I think it's outrageous that our "leading" Dems are selling the same for-profit insurance scheme we're stuck with back to us as "universal" healthcare. But if we must have some intermediary step before we 86 the bastards entirely, at least let it be one that realistically includes everyone, without paying another cent in premiums, so people can get used to the idea of a centralized, universal system. Just making it more "affordable" and providing subsidies and employer incentives isn't going to cut it. In fact, it's pathetic.

[Greyhound]

24. Pathetic indeed. Even Edwards, whom I'm trying like hell to like, is pushing the idea

that we still have to pay more, and retain the criminal infrastructure that has demolished our health care system.:grr:

I swear, these motherfuckers better pray that I don't contract some fatal disease, because I am not going to go quietly into that good night.

[DURHAM D]

2. Nice source. eom

[Vincardog]

6. So none of them are for a National Health Care program. You know Single Payer not CorpFare.

[Greyhound]

26. That accurately sums it up. Kucinich is the only candidate that gives a crap about us. n/t

:patriot:

[Selatius]

7. What if you're still too poor to afford "pooled" health insurance rates?

I also find her acceptance of 850,000 worth of drug company money a bit disturbing. I'm dismissive of subsidizing private industry in general. I have a distaste for anything smelling like corporate welfare.

[regnaD kciN]

8. Obviously, if you're "too poor"...

...it's your own damn fault that you can't afford it. :sarcasm:

[OzarkDem]

11. No income + sick means you die

are these really Democrats proposing this garbage? Come on, we can do better.

[Greyhound]

25. Well, she's the "welfare queen". "I shall sell-out to no corporation

before they donate to my campaign." - Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2000




Accepting contribution from Tata corporation after 35,000 IBM employees are laid off in her state.

[OzarkDem]

9. Requiring everyone to buy insurance from the private sector isn't reform

Her plan appears to show either a stunning ignorance of problems facing uninsured people who are sick or callous indifference. We get it, Hillary, you got a big wad of money from the insurance lobby.

[madrchsod]

14. ya got to have money to buy insurance

that is if they want to insure you....try buying insurance if you are old or have really bad health problems..

[Maven]

20. Look at Edwards and Obama's plans--basically the same industry-friendly sham

Only Kucinich is fully behind a real single-payer plan.

[leftchick]

34. and Big Pharma...

Hil is a corporation's wet dream....

<snip>

Clinton, who says she still bears "the scars" from the experience, is a less fearsome figure these days. Since being elected to the Senate, she's enjoyed a good relationship with in-state drug companies such as Pfizer and has delivered federal funding to the hospitals she once demonized. Her rhetoric, particularly against Big Pharma, can still be fierce, but her pariahs are now patrons: The industry .contributed more than $850,000 to her re-election campaign, the second highest level of .contributions to any senator.


http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-ushill0916,0,663698.story?coll=ny_home_rail_headlines

[Lorien]

10. I prefer health care to health insurance, thank you very much.

My dad is a doctor, and I have a couple of friends who are doctors too. The health insurance situation in this country is bad for them and awful for us, the patients. Enough already; Universal Health Care Now!

[HardRocker2005]

29. ditto. nt

[Crabby Appleton]

31. Same here nt

[old guy]

12. Unacceptable!

[madrchsod]

13. i guess it`s going to be another 4 yrs

before i get universal health care. i was hoping for this sooner but i guess it`s not going to happen. she fucked up the first time and it looks like she has`t learned a thing...and neither has the other two.

it`s so dam simple-universal health care with a scaled payment provided by the government. if one wants extra coverage then private insurance companies, hell the insurance companies can all go after aflac market too...god knows the american worker needs that coverage.

[warren pease]

15. Unacceptable...

We need to separate the idea of health care from the idea of health insurance.

Health care is what happens when patients and health care professionals interact to successfully diagnose and treat a medical condition or injury.

Health insurance is the protection money you have to pay the middle man to keep you out of bankruptcy court in the event of serious health problems. Why would you want to give some parasite who does absolutely nothing to provide health care a single damn penny?

The relationship of health care to insurance is manufactured out of thin air by the US obsession with applying market-based, privatized solutions to systemic social problems.

That relationship must disappear if we're ever going to have a system that treats health care as a basic human right rather than a privilege to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Btw, alone among presidential candidates, Kucinich advocates exactly that kind of single-payer, universal-access system.


wp

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. And note that he was the only one not invited to discuss health care

Patients hate insurance companies.

Doctors hate insurance companies.

Are the candidates so out of touch that they don't realize that, or are they so corrupted by contributions from Big Pharma and Big Vulture--I mean, Big Insurance?

[warren pease]

22. It's the latter, I'm afraid...

Opensecrets.org has the second quarter corporate bribes posted and there's a lot of that pharma/vulture complex money getting passed out.

And the fact that Kucinich wasn't invited to tout his health care proposals is completely understandable. If he had been allowed to speak, someone would have failed at their job as official gatekeeper, limiting national access to those pre-selected quasi-democrats who can be depended upon not to disturb the status quo.

There's a reason giant conglomerates went on a media outlet acquisition binge over the past couple of decades, and it's not their love of good investigative reporting.


wp

[Desertrose]

19. She doesn't get it...if I could afford health insurance...I'd have it

already.

"Requiring" everyone to have it doesn't mean diddly.


Health careis what we need....not health insurance. Kucinich has the right idea....HR626

DR

[ljm2002]

21. Total BS...

...the logical next step is to make it like car insurance: make everyone carry it or they can get a ticket. So if you show up in the emergency and are treated but then you are found to have no insurance, not only will you be liable for your care but you will get a big fat ticket too! That'll solve it!

I probably shouldn't even put it out there -- some politician will read it and think, why yes, that's a great idea!

[lovuian]

23. Universal Health Single payer

its the only way

[Vidar]

27. More corporate welfare for the insurance industry.

[area51]

28. Isn't that "sweet".

Hillary Rightwing Clinton is following in the footsteps of Newt Gingrich. One of Gingrich's wet dreams has been a law forcing everyone to buy health insurance. This will only exacerbate problems, and as idiot HRC doesn't know, some cannot buy insurance due to pre-existing conditions, not to mention lack of money. Perhaps she'd better change her name to H. Rightwing Gingrich. Fscking tool of insurance cos. & Tata Consulting.

[B Calm]

30. I don't want health INSURANCE, I want National Health Care!

[MadHound]

32. More of the same ol' same ol'

Taking care of her big health industry donors while screwing the average person at the same time. Once again, Hillary puts the interests of corporations before the interests of the people. If she really wanted to do something for the public, she would get behind UHC. But the only one doing that is Kucinich. One more reason he's the best candidate out there, while Hillary once again shows that she's just another corporate whore.

She can bluster and blather all she wants, but it still comes down to the fact that this is a pro corporate bill, another giveaway to her corporate sponsors.

Pathetic.

[depakid]

33. LOL.. Did anyone really expect that she wouldn't sell us out?

With Obama and Edwards, we were left to wonder- but with Hillary Clinton, there was never any doubt.

And this exact same thing will happen with issue after issue- just as it did in the 90's.

[B Calm]

35. Edwards has been warning us about her. People need to wake

up!