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Why am I not supporting Hillary Clinton? Because she's opposed single-payer throughout her career
One huge reason why I'm supporting Bernie Sanders and not Hillary Clinton is because she opposes single-payer healthcare. Here's what she said on the issue:
You know, I have thought about this, as you might guess, for 15 years and I never seriously considered a single payer system...So I think if you look at most public opinion surveys, even from groups of people who you would think would be pretty positive towards single payer, Americans have a very skeptical attitude. They don’t really know that Medicare is a single payer system. They don’t really think about that. They think about these foreign countries that they hear all these stories about, whether they’re true or not, which they’re often not. And so talking about single payer really is a conversation ender for most Americans, because then they become very nervous about socialized medicine and all the rest of this. So I never really seriously considered it.
Full article: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/march/hillary_clinton_on_s.php
Hillary also attacked Obama from the right in 2008 because he previously supported single-payer in 2003.
Moreover, Bernie Senators met with Hillary in the 1990s to talk about single-payer healthcare reform, and she completely rebuked his proposal:
They got their meeting at the White House that month, and the two doctors laid out the case for single-payer to the first lady. “She said, ‘You make a convincing case, but is there any force on the face of the earth that could counter the hundreds of millions of the dollars the insurance industry would spend fighting that?’” recalled Himmelstein. “And I said, “How about the president of the United States actually leading the American people?’ and she said, ‘Tell me something real.’ ”
Full article: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/17/1394018/-The-difference-between-Bernie-Sanders-and-Hillary-Clinton-in-one-paragraph
Single-payer is really a huge issue for me. Despite the modest gains of the ACA, 35 million Americans don't have healthcare. Even if all the states expanded Medicaid, there would be a huge coverage gap. Premiums, co-pays, etc., would continue to rise due to mergers between insurance providers and healthcare providers. Our for-profit multi-payer system creates a lot of waste: administrative costs, overhead, costs in advertising and marketing, and costs to generate profits to satisfy CEOs and shareholders. A single-payer system would get rid of all these costs, cover everyone, improve primary and preventative care, and capitalize on economies of scale to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs and medical services. Healthcare delivery could still be privatized, like it is in Canada.
I haven't heard anything from Hillary lately about moving toward a single-payer, Medicare-for-All system. Or even adding a strong robust public option and encouraging states to experiment with single-payer (as the Congressional Progressive Caucus has called for). We continue to have this wildly inefficient system in which we pay a ridiculous amount for healthcare, but don't get much out of it, and it's a chimera with third party, employer based healthcare, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, the VA, and people with no healthcare whatsoever. The ACA in many ways was a form of corporate welfare, mandating people to purchase insurance company products. It doesn't go far enough.
Hillary's 1993 reform plan, in my opinion, was very weak. Moreover, on the campaign trail, she's focused on reforming the existing system, often calling for market-based reforms:
Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that she wants to build on “what works” in the president’s health care law, suggesting that she may be open to allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines and saying that she would fight for lower prescription drug prices.
Source: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-health-care-policy-small-business-owners-iowa
I don't think I can support Hillary unless she comes out in favor of at least a strong public option that can morph into single-payer over time if the American people choose it over private insurance. Until then, I'll be supporting Bernie Sanders in the primary because he's consistently fought for single-payer, Medicare-for-All healthcare throughout his political career. It is the system that most advanced nations adhere to, and they rank much higher than the U.S. on international rankings of healthcare systems. It also helps businesses too, especially small ones, b/c they don't have to worry about spending money on covering everyone. Our healthcare system has systemic problems, but the Democratic Party establishment is unwilling in addressing it.
I'll be supporting Bernie Sanders for President, because HRC hasn't come out in favor of single-payer and/or a very strong public option.
Also, Hillary Clinton's 1993 plan was not a single-payer proposal. It largely revolved around regulating the employer-based, third-party system that we have through establishing "regional alliances" similar to the healthcare exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. The 1993 Clinton plan relied on employer mandates. She tried to work with the insurance companies, but they eventually fired back against the plan.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_1993#Criticism
Hillary never supported or worked for single-payer. I know people who were involved in health care in the Clinton years, and worked hard on Prop 186 in California, which is a ballot initiative trying to implement single payer in CA in 1994. No one could not even get Hillary to publicly acknowledge the single payer concept: it just wasn't part of her conversation. It was very frustrating.
Hillary's plan, created by her task force with lots of insurance industry reps, was called 'managed competition.' It's fairly well described in other posts here, and does not differ too much from Obamacare, really. The Republicans opposed HillaryCare, of course, but they mostly just watched the majority Democrats squabble about it. She couldn't even get it through Democrat-controlled committees to get it to a vote on the floor of the House when the Democrats were in control. Then, once Republicans took over the House in the middle of Clinton's first term, the issue was simply dead until after the election of President Obama. Long wait.
Congressional Democrats who were more progressive leaning opposed the more moderate Clinton plan, and pushed for single-payer.
Although universal coverage and other basic principles of President Clinton's health care plan have been widely applauded on Capitol Hill, a brigade of congressional Democrats is fighting for a dark-horse alternative: a government-financed system modeled after Canada's.
Already backed by a third of the House's Democratic majority, the alternative is known as "single-payer" because the government would pay virtually all the medical bills now footed by the tangle of insurance companies, businesses, workers, governments and individuals.
Proponents--led by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), a former psychiatrist--assert that the single-payer proposal not only covers everybody simpler and faster than Clinton's complex "managed competition" scheme but also holds down costs better, provides more choice for patients and doctors and assures quality care.
Already backed by a third of the House's Democratic majority, the alternative is known as "single-payer" because the government would pay virtually all the medical bills now footed by the tangle of insurance companies, businesses, workers, governments and individuals.
Proponents--led by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), a former psychiatrist--assert that the single-payer proposal not only covers everybody simpler and faster than Clinton's complex "managed competition" scheme but also holds down costs better, provides more choice for patients and doctors and assures quality care.
Source: http://articles.latimes.com/1993-10-09/news/mn-43945_1_health-care-plan
Hillary also opposed single-payer on her 2008 campaign website:
Source: http://www.medicareforall.org/pages/Hillary_Clinton
She seems to be adamantly opposed to non-profit single-payer national health insurance,
as indicated by the words on her campaign web site. See below:
9/17/2007: ” … Now I know my Republican opponents will try to equate health care for all Americans with government run health care. Well don’t let them fool us again. This is not government run. There will be no new bureaucracy. You can keep the doctors you know and trust. You keep the insurance you have if you like it. But this plan expands personal choice and increases competition to keep costs down.
— from Senator Clinton’s campaign website
as indicated by the words on her campaign web site. See below:
9/17/2007: ” … Now I know my Republican opponents will try to equate health care for all Americans with government run health care. Well don’t let them fool us again. This is not government run. There will be no new bureaucracy. You can keep the doctors you know and trust. You keep the insurance you have if you like it. But this plan expands personal choice and increases competition to keep costs down.
— from Senator Clinton’s campaign website
Here's another article outlining her opposition to single-payer, entitled: "Hillary Clinton Likes Obamacare, And Opposes Single-Payer Health Insurance"
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/hillary-clinton-likes-oba_b_4881399.html
Excerpt:
Hillary Clinton has confirmed, to a paying audience of 20,000 sellers of electronic health records systems, that she supports Obamacare, and opposes single-payer health insurance.
Speaking to a closed-to-the-press meeting of the "HIMSS14" (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Conference 2014) in Orlando Florida on February 26th, she condemned the Canadian and other nations' single-payer healthcare systems by saying, "We don't have one size fits all; our country is quite diverse. What works in New York City won't work in Albuquerque." The presumption is that what works in Canada cannot work here, that local control must trump everything in order to fix what's wrong with American health care.
Speaking to a closed-to-the-press meeting of the "HIMSS14" (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Conference 2014) in Orlando Florida on February 26th, she condemned the Canadian and other nations' single-payer healthcare systems by saying, "We don't have one size fits all; our country is quite diverse. What works in New York City won't work in Albuquerque." The presumption is that what works in Canada cannot work here, that local control must trump everything in order to fix what's wrong with American health care.
Here's a video in which Hillary disses Obama for having previously supported single-payer in 2003:
In it, Hillary attacks Obama for having expressed support for single-payer healthcare in 2003. She frames it as if supporting single-payer is a bad thing. So no, I am not wrong in my facts. She rejects single-payer, and says her plan includes promoting individual responsibility, mandating employers to grant coverage, and retaining Medicare and Medicaid. She doesn't call for getting rid of profit in the health insurance system, or pushing for Medicare-for-All, which we so desperately need to do.
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heh indeed. 
