Clinton misstates Obama's stance on healthcare

[OhioChick]

February 29, 2008

HANGING ROCK, Ohio - Senator Hillary Clinton, who has accused rival Barack Obama of sending misleading mailers to voters about her healthcare plan, misstated his healthcare views before an audience yesterday in rural Ohio.

Clinton, speaking on poverty and family wellness at a community center, told a couple hundred people that she was committed to universal healthcare because families cannot be fully healthy unless every member of the family is.

"If you don't have health insurance for everyone, we're never going to get out of this," she said. "We're just going to keep running around in circles."

This, Clinton said, was one of the big differences between her and Obama. "I want . . . each and every member of the family to have health insurance. My opponent only wants your children to have health insurance," she said. "I don't think that's smart."

The main difference in their healthcare proposals is this: Clinton would require that everyone purchase insurance, a mandate she says she would impose in tandem with bringing costs down through subsidies and other measures. Obama would impose such a mandate only on parents, requiring them to cover their children.

Clinton argues that Obama would leave 15 million people uncovered by not extending his mandate to adults.

Obama, though, has made healthcare a centerpiece of his domestic agenda, and he, too, has proposed a detailed plan to cover the uninsured, pledging to have affordable coverage available for all Americans by the end of his first term as president.

Asked yesterday about her suggestion that Obama wanted to provide health coverage to children but not adults, Clinton stood by what she said was a "fair" distinction.

"Look at his plan," she told reporters. "He has a mandate to cover children. He does not have any requirement for adults. He has said repeatedly that he is concerned about children. Well, I cover both children and adults, and I wanted to make the case today because I know this, having done this for so many years, that you can give your children health insurance, but if the mother or the father who's the breadwinner can't get health insurance, gets sick, can't go to work, the whole family suffers."

"The bottom line," she added, "is he was not willing to go the distance with a universal healthcare plan. . . . I was drawing that distinction, and I think it's a fair one."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/02/29/clinton_misstates_obamas_stance_on_healthcare/

[jsamuel]

1. Clinton is right, but she used hyperbole

[rinsd]

2. The characterization of Obama's plan in that manner is unfair.

To cast Obama's plan as excluding everyone but children is wrong.

But then again so is Obama's misleading meme that Hillary will force you to buy healthcare even if you cannot afford it, ignoring the expansion of public health options and the tying of premium payments to income.

[SoFlaJet]

3. Oh come ON Ohio Chick

we all KNOW that Obama is the liar and has been the ONLY one to use dirty tricks in this campaign because Clinton would NEVER resort to those kinds of tactics-why should she? She's winning every primary anyway...

[monktonman]

4. I dont want my wages garnished. n/t

[jsamuel]

5. Are you against your wages being garnished in the case of SS?

[rinsd]

7. Taxes = wage garnishment.

Mandates for health insurance are an issue of personal freedom.

I know Obama appeals to the other side of the aisle but jeez...

[rinsd]

6. So you would be unwilling to pay a health care tax towards single payer?

[monktonman]

14. Towards single payer ...yes

A garnishment to hand over my money to an insurance company...no
I CHOOSE not to pay for health insurance because I know its just a scam.
I can afford it, I just refuse to throw my money down the hole and the Hill inc.
crowd calls me a "deadbeat". That will get my vote.

[rinsd]

17. You can just as easily join a public health plan as opposed to a private one.

A big part of both plans is allowing for greater pool to be able to tap into the public health plans including one the Congressional members have.

[monktonman]

18. This is your idea of universal health care for all?

Cant reply to your reply, off to work!
Go ahead though....spin away!

[rinsd]

19. No, my idea for universal healthcare is single payer.

Whose spinning? Public heath plan expansion is a key element in both plans.

[babylonsister]

8. Say it isn't so! She must have just slipped...

:eyes:

[OhioChick]

9. Purely Accidental I Tell You.

:sarcasm:

[SeaLyons]

10. Clinton is Right

[ChromeFoundry]

11. More lies

Recommended

[sandnsea]

12. All she's done is lie from the start

A mandate to buy insurance is not universal health care. I do not understand why people are allowing themselves to be fooled by this shit.

[monktonman]

15. Exactly. n/t

[monktonman]

16. dupe

[Araxen]

13. More Clinton lies

She might as well take that D and switch it to an R and take Lieberman with her.