The New Hillary Clinton Healthcare Plan
Sunday, September 23, 2007 at 07:58PM 
Hillary Clinton is associated with healthcare in the minds of many voters. Voters remember her failed attempt at universal healthcare when she was First Lady in 1993. Clinton proposed a radical overhaul of the entire healthcare system that would have lead to a huge government bureaucracy. The plan would have increased taxes. An army of special interest groups and the American public found her big government healthcare plan very unpopular.
Clinton later acknowledged in her book, “Living History,” that her political inexperience partly contributed to the plan’s defeat, but mentioned that many other factors were also responsible. Republicans made the Clinton health care plan a major campaign issue of the 1994 midterm elections, which saw a net Republican gain of 53 seats in the House and 7 in the Senate. The Republicans won control of both Houses of Congress. That’s why, when on the topic of healthcare reform, she states that she has been involved in the process in the past and has ''the scars to prove it.''
This is also probably the reason why, until September 17, 2007, she had not unveiled her healthcare plan. Senator Clinton had to present her plan since her democratic opponents had presented their health care plans long ago. Also, public opinion polls show that health care is the primary domestic issue on the minds of the voters in the 2008 Presidential election. This voter concern is reflected by the statistics released in late August 2007 from the Census Bureau which found that forty seven million people in the United States do not have health insurance. Of those who do have healthcare coverage, healthcare premiums have risen an average of 78 percent in the last six years.
In response to these polls and statistics, Hillary Clinton unveiled her healthcare initiative on Monday, September 17, 2007 in Iowa. The 2007 version of Hillary healthcare looks substantially different than the complex 1,000 page government run health care plan she proposed in 1994.
Sen. Clinton's $110 billion a year plan though would still greatly expand government control over the health insurance market. She requires that employers buy insurance, and her program expands government insurance programs like Medicare. However, her new proposal allows people who like their health insurance to keep it. The proposal features an "individual mandate" which requires that people who do not receive coverage from their employer to purchase affordable healthcare for themselves. This healthcare would have a reduced net cost through tax breaks and incentives. The program would be financed at least in part through the elimination of President Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.
While the 2007 version of Hillary Clinton’s plan still has details to be worked out (such as, what coverage, if any, will be provided to illegal aliens), the program looks similar to programs Democratic candidates Barack Obama and John Edwards are proposing for universal healthcare reform. It also appears similar to the healthcare legislation which Mitt Romney signed into law in the State of Massachusetts.
The Democrats will argue about the nuances of each of their programs over the next several months, but it will be years before these programs can be passed in their present form. The cost of these plans combined with the army of special interest groups opposed to some of the plans’ provisions make the passage of these plans in their current form dubious indeed.
As for Hillary Clinton, the new program she has proposed is politically safe for the primary election. She has left out many details that could cost her votes. She has not indicated how the program would be managed, which in a program like this, is the determining factor of success. She wants universal healthcare by the end of her second term, so the public would have to give her an eight year mandate before they would see her program in action. Hillary Clinton has chosen the safe path. She has learned the hard lessons about healthcare reform from the disaster of her proposed healthcare plan in 1993. Her candidacy for the Presidency in 2008 is clearly her top priority today.
Reader Comments (1)
If we as an electorate would have had the courage to take seriously Senator Clintons health care plan back when she first offered it, everyone would have it today. It was expensive, 250 Billion at the time. That was the cost of everyone that paid health insurance. What I do not understand is we, the insurance payers, pay for those without insurance now. Why can't we pay a "tax" and everyone is covered. I know state sponsered health care is taboo, but what we have today is not an option. Illegal aliens get health care now at the expense of you and I. Something needs to be done!