Update below.
So, Hillary is jumping on the Universal Health Insurance bandwagon tomorrow. (Caveat: I really wish people would stop calling Universal Health Insurance as Universal Health Care, as Pear uses for the title of his article — they are not one and the same.) Not that she’s ever jumped off the bandwagon, she just hasn’t been as vocal or comprehensive in her plan as say Edwards.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday will lay out a plan to secure health insurance for all Americans while severely limiting the ability of insurers to deny coverage or charge higher premiums to people with chronic illnesses and other medical problems, her aides and advisers say.
Mrs. Clinton’s purpose, they said, is not only to cover the 47 million people who are uninsured but to improve the quality of health care and make insurance more affordable for those who already have it.
The goal of Mrs. Clinton’s plan, to be outlined in a speech in Des Moines, is similar to that of the ill-fated plan that she and President Bill Clinton pushed in 1993 and 1994.
Edwards was the first, I believe, to put forth a comprehensive health platform — requiring universal health insurance, and while I found some problems with it, from both a small business perspective and an uninsured perspective, I feel that it had the best chance of being adopted by Congress –assuming self-serving industry-kowtowing rethugnuts leave it alone.
Even though her plan has not been formally announced, insurers are already lining up and saying it’s going to drive up costs — it’s called fear-mongering.
Mary Nell Lehnhard, senior vice president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, said, “Some of Mrs. Clinton’s proposals, while trying to make insurance more affordable for older, sicker people, could unintentionally drive up costs for young, healthy people and ultimately for everyone.”
Only one person, Kucinich, in the Democratic field is calling for Medicare for all. I think people would be surprised at how many people actually support a Medicare for all plan. On the ground, over the years, I can’t even count the number of construction laborers that would not hesitate to have their taxes increased and know that their health care is all taken care of.
Of course, health insurers don’t like that, they’d largely be out of work. What largely gets lost in this discussion is what is best for the people, not just the 47 million uninsured, but also all of the underinsured. Medicare for all, puts everyone on the same footing for health care.
Update: Betsy at My Left Wing discusses Kucinich’s electability. Within the post, we find a link to this nugget:
The majority of the American people want a single-payer health care system — Medicare for all.
The majority of doctors want it.
A good chunk of hospital CEOs want it.
But what they want doesn’t appear to matter.
Why?
Because a single-payer health care plan would mean the death of the private health insurance industry and reduced profits for the pharmaceutical industry.
Presidential candidates John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Mitt Romney and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger talk a lot about universal health care.
But not one of them advocates for single-payer — because single-payer too directly confronts the big corporate interests profiting off the miserable health care system we are currently saddled with.
Shorter version, all the candidates, with the exception of Kucinich, are behind on the issue of health care. They are caving to corporate interests, rather than working for what is best for the people.
It is important that everyone understand that universal health insurance does NOT SOLVE THE INSURANCE CRISIS. Oops. Sorry. Didn’t mean to shout. But the mainstream media don’t make the distinction, as you did, between UHI and a single-payer system (like Kucinich proposes) and it won’t solve the problems. It just means both higher taxes AND the same high premiums we currently pay. The insurance industry costs 30% for administrative fees, plus it makes a profit of something like 23%. So half of what you pay for insurance pays the employees of the company and the stockholders. Medicare has an administrative cost of, I think the figures I saw were, under 5% (and yes, they are paying employees) plus no profit motive.
How would you, paying perhaps $1000 a month to insure a family of four, like to pay $500 a month in taxes and no payment for health insurance instead? How about this: you pay $700/mo in taxes instead of $1000/mo in insurance premiums, and you can walk into any doctor’s office and never have to pay a cent no matter how much the charges? And if you have a catastrophic illness, it costs you exactly the same $700/mo for taxes and not one dime more for coverage?
Oh, and those comparisons to Canada? Bogus. Turns out that Canada is the worst of the single-payer systems and that many countries with single-payer systems (like France and Germany) have much better service, with shorter waits for pretty much any and every medical service. How would you like to be able to see your dermatologist in four days instead of two months and not have to reach into your wallet for a co-pay or, since your dermatologist just dropped your insurance company because they don’t pay fast enough and deny too many services, have to pay the whole $60 charge out of your pocket, plus the cost of the meds?
Health insurance used to be a vital service, but now it is a scam and its bankrupting people in the name of paying profits to the stockholders, which means, largely, a very small group of people holding a mass of stock and a very large group of people holding a hundred shares or so each.
All I’ve ever asked anyone to do when discussing this issue is to look at the numbers and use your common sense. Oh, and we can’t have a Bush administration running this sort of thing because they want to destroy government services and privatize everything, so they have deliberately made every government service work badly. That was what was actually behind the FEMA failures. FEMA was running very professionally and well until the Bushies installed Joe Allbaugh to run it and his brief was to destroy the agency. He did so and its top people left because it was so badly run. Then there was an emergency and the agency failed and the people who wrecked it said, “See? Government doesn’t work. Privatize!” They’ve done this with every social service they’ve touched. What is the….oh, I could go on and on. But the bottom line is, be informed and use your common sense.
Excellent points, DBK. And you know, I think the distinction between UHI and UHC must be shouted, expecially to get it through some thick skulls.
Well, I have long maintained that employer based health insurance would never ever solve the current problems. This is true for two big reasons: having a fourth party select and pay for the third party that pays your medical bills artificially drives up prices and short circuits any possible “free” market action; the self-employed, the unemployed, contractors, and *children* do not have employers.
That being said, insurance itself adds huge expenses to the system, particularly when we are talking about publicly traded insurance companies instead of mutuals.
I have noted that even Mr. Edwards has started calling it mandatory health insurance instead of universal health insurance, because that’s what it is. I used to think that taking employers out of the picture would fix things because then people would make insurance decisions based on their own budget and needs; insurance companies would be forced to offer products people wanted at prices they were willing to pay. While this may have been the answer 5 or 10 years ago, I don’t think it is anymore. I now think it’s time we were honest with ourselves and implemented Medicare for All, or at the very least, Medikids for everyone under 18 and full time students up to 25.
And don’t kid yourself. Those big insurance companies will still find a way to make money. There will still be “supplemental” policies.
There were several important omissions in Sen. Clinton’s plan that concern me as a moderate Democrat.
1)How much will it cost per year?
2) When will it be operational? (At the SEIU health care forum in March, she said it would fully operational by the “end of her second term in office”) Is this true?
3) The Wall Street Journal reported that although insurers would have to provide coverage for sick and well people, they WOULD NOT FACE LIMITS ON THE PREMIUMS THEY CHARGE.
Is this true, and if so, what good is it to healthy middle class workers like me who are already paying a small fortune?
4) How is Clinton’s plan different from Edwards’? John Edwards has had a detailed health care plan with costs and fine print out for months
SW, there is no way that employer-based insurance providership can solve any problem at this point, II’m absolutely convinced of that. In fact, I would say that it is adding to the problem. Primarily, businesses are passing on the higher cost of insurance to workers, workers can’t afford it and are dropping ins.
Small businesses (5 and less employees) are not always given opportunities for the “pooled” rates, but are directed to individual plans — driving up the cost to small businesses and the employees. This occurs when less than 5 of the employees want health insurance (assuming a spouse has a family plan).
I’m sure that the insurance industry will rebound when Medicare for all is finally implemented, and find some loophole to exploit.
I don’t believe this lady is going to do anything to help any of us. It is just more empty talk that I have heard time and time again.
She had her shot when her Husband was president and nothing happened. We don’t need another Clinton, just like we didn’t need another Bush.
The only candidate who i think is actually honest about helping the healthcare situation is Kucinich. But I doubt even he could get anything done.
I think people need to finally wake up and realize that the democrats don’t care about you anymore than the republicans. Things are not going to get any better until we vote them all out of office and start over. The Dems And the Republicans are one in the same.
medblogger, see the update.