Posted on 10/18/2007 7:03:22 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that immigrants living in the U.S. illegally would not be covered by her proposed universal health care plan.
The New York senator said she supports basic health services for illegal immigrants, including hospitalization and treatment of acute conditions. But she said the magnitude of the nation's health care challenge means her universal coverage proposal would not cover the 12 million people living in the country illegally.
"People who are here legally deserve some better treatment and acceptance in the law than people who are not here legally," she said. "These are hard choices."
As for ways to reduce pressure on the overburdened health care system, she said she could envision using "carrots and maybe a few sticks" to motivate people to lose weight and make other behavioral changes that could help.
Speaking at a forum sponsored by several health care organizations, Clinton addressed a range of questions on the future of Social Security and Medicare, racial and gender disparities in health care coverage and ways to encourage medical students to become primary care doctors rather than specialists.
Most of all, there were questions about her proposed $110 billion health care plan and how it would bring order to a fractured system.
She didn't directly address questions of whether smokers or obese people should pay more for health care but said as president she would use the "bully pulpit" to encourage healthy lifestyle choices, particularly among young people.
Clinton, who has publicly fretted about her weight, drew laughs as she recalled competing for presidential physical fitness awards as a child.
"We were rounded up and taken to the gym where we had to jump and run. I was horrible at it. They kept telling me to run and I'd say, 'I'm running,'" she said. "It was a very strong message to children that the president cares about your health care. I personally believed Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy were sitting in the White House signing my certificate."
The former first lady also spoke about her failure to enact universal coverage during her husband's presidency, assuring audience members that she would not repeat the mistakes that doomed that effort.
Among other things, she said it had been a mistake to try and draft the plan out of the White House, and that as president she had no intention producing the specific legislation for Congress to consider.
"I'm setting goals for the country. But I know how important it is to work out the details in consultation with the Congress," she said.
Clinton scoffed at suggestions from Republican presidential rivals that her plan is little more than socialized medicine, calling them "old, tired accusations." But she acknowledged the need to bring a broad spectrum of interests together in order to enact her proposed plan.
"I think we'll have a very strong coalition that will be able to make the case to Congress," she said. "Nobody will come out of this process with 100 percent of what he or she wants."
Clinton also said the task would be made easier if more Democrats were elected to the Senate in 2008.
"It's one of my highest priorities," she said.
Democratic Presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. talks on a cell phone upon her arrival at a Presidential Health Care Forum, sponsored by Families USA and the Federation of American Hospitals, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007, in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Democratic Presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., speaks at the National Women's Finance Council Summit in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2007. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Don’t shrinks call this “megalomania”?
Socialism in its finest form....
"Bill is effortlessly charismatic. He walks into a room and everybody loves him. She knows she's not, so she has to kind of pretend she's something she's not to make up for that, so that people will relate to her. And her entire presentation is phony, anybody can see that and there is – you know – Bill lies about sex, Hillary lies about everything."
Dick Morris
So who said they wanted to have this incompetent, never did anything in her entire life worth noting, set goals for others.
Where is the gravitas, I want to see the resume that says she is capable of doing anything with health care. I don’t accept the premise that she has a resume worth looking at.
Tell me seriously, if this woman showed up would you hire her to fix your companies health care?
..or her focus groups told her enough of this earth tone and pink already?
Presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. visits the My Gym in Bedford, N.H. Tuesday October 16, 2007 (AP Photo/Cheryl Senter)
LOOK!! BEHIND YOU--KARL ROVE!!!!
The anchor baby issue was decided by activist judicial fiat; interpreting the word “person” as not intended to be “citizen”. Anyone with common sense, reading the development of the concept, would see that a foreigner that has a baby on U.S. soil is no way entitled to have automatic citizenship bestowed on the offspring, when they are LEGALLY non-existent BUT LAWYERS CONTORTED THE MEANING, and the influx began....
ping
Hillery's plan for America, suck the life out of it.
In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson created the Presidential Physical Fitness Award...
Hillary Rodham Clinton was born on October 26, 1947. In 1966 she was 19 years old. High School classes in Physical Education were not on the curricula to Juniors and Seniors back then.
Where the hell am I? Is this the United States where there were laws?
What is going on???
Motorcycle riders, gun owners, meat eaters, coffee drinkers, alcohol users take note! This is just the beginning.
Exercise was mandatory in “1984”, and eating right was the only option- you ate only what was made available.
Graduated in 1969, began college in 1965 1 month before she turned 18. Which means she was a senior in HS in 1965, one year before Johnson created the Presidential Fitness Awards.
She's lying again.
I wonder when the 12 million figure was established as the "true" number. It used to be 12-20 million, and last week I read that it may be as high as 30 some million. I refuse to use this established low-ball figure.
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