Posted on 09/17/2007 2:17:11 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
(CBS News) DES MOINES, Iowa -- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a call for universal health care on Monday, plunging back into a political battle she memorably waged and lost as first lady more than a decade ago.
"This is not government-run," Clinton said of her plan to extend coverage to an estimated 47 million Americans who now go without.
She called for a requirement for businesses to obtain insurance for employees, and said the wealthy should pay higher taxes to help defray the cost for those less able to pay for it. She put the government's cost at $110 billion a year.
"Perhaps more than anybody else I know just how hard this fight will be," said the New York senator.
Dismissing the inevitable Republican criticism, Clinton admonished the crowd. "I know my Republican opponents will try to equate health care for all Americans with government-run health care. Don't let them fool us again. This is not government-run."
A front-running contender for her party's nomination, Clinton drew criticism this time from fellow Democrats as well as Republicans.
"To ensure all Americans have affordable health care will take more than leadership that simply knows how to fight," said rival Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn.
Addressing a crowd at a medical center in the early voting state of Iowa, Clinton laid out her proposal, with the centerpiece a so-called "individual mandate," requiring everyone to have health insurance - just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Rival John Edwards has also offered a plan that includes an individual mandate, while the proposal outlined by Barack Obama does not.
Clinton's plan builds on the existing employer-based system of coverage. People who receive insurance through the workplace could continue to do so; businesses, in turn, would be required to offer insurance to employees, or contribute to a government-run pool that would help pay for those not covered. Clinton would also offer a tax subsidy to small businesses to help them afford the cost of providing coverage to their workers.
"I believe everyone - every man, woman and child - should have quality, affordable health care in America," said Clinton, vowing to accomplish the goal in her first term.
For individuals and families who are not covered by employers or whose employer-based coverage is inadequate, Clinton would offer expanded versions of two existing government programs: Medicare, and the health insurance plan currently offered to federal employees.
Consumers could choose between either government-run program, but aides stress that no new federal bureaucracy would be created under the Clinton plan.
Clinton proposed several specific measures to pay for her plan, including an end to some of the Bush-era tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 per year. Edwards has vowed to completely repeal the tax cuts for high earners to pay for the cost of his plan, estimated at $90 billion-$120 billion per year, while Obama would pay for his plan in part by letting the tax cuts expire in 2010.
Her speech came nearly 14 years after her first attempt at a universal healthcare plan that was highly criticized by Republicans as a socialized medical plan that eventually fell apart and left a stain on the former First Lady's record, reports CBS News reporter Fernando Suarez. Despite her failed attempt in 1993 Clinton assured the crowd of about 150 doctors, nurses and patients that she grew from her experience.
Aides say she has jettisoned the complexity and uncertainty of the last effort in favor of a plan that stresses simplicity, cost control and consumer choice.
In response, Obama said Clinton's plan is similar to one he proposed in the spring, "though my universal health care plan would go further in reducing the punishing cost of health care than any other proposal that's been offered in this campaign."
He took another swipe at the Clinton administration's closed-door sessions on health care in the 1990s, saying "the real key to passing any health care reform is the ability to bring people together in an open, transparent process that builds a broad consensus for change."
Other Democratic rivals were swift in their criticism.
Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said, "If universal health care plans could have gotten us health care, we would have gotten it a long time ago." Added John Edwards: "If you're going to negotiate universal health care with the same powerful interests that defeated it before, your proposal isn't a plan, it's a starting point."
Edwards said on his first day in office he will submit legislation that would pull health insurance for the president, members of Congress and all political appointees unless they pass universal health care within six months.
Republican Mitt Romney, in New York City for a fundraising stop, criticized Clinton's proposal, saying, "'Hillary care' continues to be bad medicine ... in her plan, we have Washington-managed health care. Fundamentally, she takes her inspiration from European bureaucracies."
The plan that Romney helped institute while governor of Massachusetts requires the same individual insurance mandate as Clinton's and uses state subsidies to help reduce the cost of private coverage. Since then, Romney has said he would leave it up to the states to decide whether they supported such a mandate.
Said Republican Rudy Giuliani's campaign: "Senator Clinton's latest health scheme includes more government mandates, expensive federal subsidies and more big bureaucracy - in short, prescription for an increase in wait times, a decrease in patient care and tax hikes to pay for it all."
Exactly...
If this is such a brilliant idea, why don’t New Yorkers start this in their own state? They have a committed liberal governor and a committed liberal NYC mayor and two committed liberal US senators?
Just like the minimum wage, dimocrats don’t want (or can’t)pass their brilliant ideas in their own backyards so they want to go to D.C. and force their own neighbors into doing something via Federal legislation. If this isn’t a difference between the two parties, I don’t know what is. Even Romneys socialist-lite program was only a crippling disease in his own state and doesn’t force Virginians or Floridians to pay for the Kennedy family rehab stays.
read my post #37.
How many Democratic voters were scared off by the first socialized medicine scheme?
Hitlery would be better served by utilizing her time hiding her corruption and her link to all her and Bubba’s “room temperature” associates and all their collective skeletons.
Let me tell you exactly how stupid Hillary is:
We can’t figure out how a 65billion dollar medical trust fund being established by the big three for the UAW is going to fund 253,000 auto worker retirees so how in the world does that
Stupid Woman think 110billion dollars is going to provide for the rest of America!
If there was a smart GOP somewhere reading this they would use it.
Soul less ... the both of them.
Empty shells of nothing but themselves.
Full of greed.
You do without while they get it all.
They have protection...we do not.
They have the private planes...we do not.
They have the best of everything...we have nothing.
No thanks. This woman is out to lunch!
Make no mistake, Congress created the very health care crisis politicians are now vowing to fix through a myriad of payment schemes meant to support special interests.
Look back to 1985 when Congress passed legislation curtailing our nations ability to produce doctors. Both political parties were conspirators in the actions. They had to be as the Democrats controlled the House and the Republicans the Senate.
Costs rise when supply is cut, not when a method of payment runs in short supply. Government, politicians to be precise, created the health care crisis to fill their campaign coffers with money, and they have done so ever since. The financial health of their campaigns is of greater importance to them than medical health care.
Read it and weep: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-doctor-shortage_x.htm
Congress further worsened our health care in 2005 when it made it illegal for US citizens to purchase certified American manufactured prescription drugs from outside the USA, where they sold for considerably less. So much for free market principles. They have been made obsolete by government.
Remember...the Hildabeast doesnt need it to work...only for it to pander to the sheeple out there who’ll vote for her for it, because it sounds like something for “free”.
Only the plan is stupid...she’s simply evil for putting it into play solely for the goal of gaining the presidency.
We need to push the spineless Republicans to push an investigation into her illegal money scandal and to keep talking about it.
I would imagine that she's going to 'tax' us into providing for ourselves what we have already determined that we cannot afford (at this time, anyway). Many of the self-employed are already covered under a spouse's plan, yet I'm sure that we are counted as 'uninsured' by the statisticians.
We need to push the spineless Republicans to push an investigation into her illegal money scandal and to keep talking about it.
I’ve been self employed for 14 years and have never been without it.
If it’s not government run, how can it be mandatory ?
Hmm... I briefly considered photoshopping Hillary's face onto the body of either Lursa or B'Etor (the villainous sisters of ST:TNG). However, it's clear that both of them are simply too, uh, feminine in appearance. The face transplant just won't work.
Now, that fat old (male) Klingon general from Star Trek V... a picture of *him* might do the trick. Seems a shame, though... Klingons do, after all, value personal honor.
Whether or not you get health care depends upon government employees deciding if you are worth the effort.
Perhaps Hillary kare will one day decide that Freepers are narrow-minded reactionaries and a threat to healthy, democratic discussion; therefore, a nation's health is more important that anti-state miscreants. No health care for you, Freeper!
I'm nuts?
Then please explain recent reports out of England that some are not getting the care they need because of their life style or personal habits. Some are more equal than others of course and a "life style choice" just might entitle you to more, more, more . . . .
How can folks want this p.o.s. to lead them into anything?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Because we let every turkey in the country vote! I never understood why people elected her con artist husband!
“con artist husband!”,
You are far to kind in your discription of Bill Clinton.
He is in on the murders, thefts, selling of military secrets to the chi-coms etc.etc.etc.
Would nearly need a private cematary to handle all the dead folks surroundig the Clintons.
Morning Red :-)
Good post.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.