John Nichols: Clinton's Prescription for Another Heath Care Reform Failure

[marmar]

from The Nation:



BLOG | Posted 09/18/2007 @ 06:24am
Clinton's Prescription for Another Heath Care Reform Failure
John Nichols



Would someone please ask Hillary Clinton to stop coming up with health care "reform" plans that are less attractive than the dysfunctional system she proposes to replace?

The former first lady, who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the 1990s by responding to the demand for a sane and humane system to deliver affordable medical care to all Americans with a plan to drown the ailing in a bureaucracy designed to augment the profits of the nation's largest insurance companies, is back with an equally heavy-handed and unappealing "reform" proposal.

The senator from New York who has emerged as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination -- based, in no small part, on romantic misrecollections of her last foray into the nation's seemingly-endless health-care debate -- wants to solve the crisis of the uninsured and the under-insured by requiring every American to obtain coverage.

Of course, the ridiculous Mitt Romney decries the Clinton campaign proposal as ``European-style socialized medicine."

But Romney knows so little about health care that he cannot even pick a smart site for a press conference on the issue -- he derided the Clinton plan in front of St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, home of the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center that is named for his chief rival in the Republican nomination race.

The reality is that the Clinton plan is about as socialistic as a Ronald Reagan corporate tax cut.

The Clinton plan maintains the current system of for-profit, insurance-industry defined health care delivery. The only real change is that, in return for minimal requirements regarding coverage of those with preexisting conditions, the government would pump hundreds of billions in federal dollars into the accounts of some of the country's wealthiest corporations. The plan's tax credit scheme would buy some more coverage for low-income families, which is good, but it would do so at a cost so immense that, ultimately, Clinton's plan will be as tough a sell as the failed 1993 "Hillarycare" proposal.

America is ready for health care reform. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=233626

[BridgeTheGap]

1. Any healthcare "system" that involves private companies

is going to place profit over health. This is what has happened since hmos first came on the scene.
They cut staff back, etc. all in the name of the almighty dollar.
HRC's proposal still treats healthcare as a privelege and not a right.