Clinton's Triangulation On Health Care Threatens Real Reform

I could feel my blood pressure rising when I heard Hillary Clinton respond on the Today Show to my comment about her in Newsweek. (Watch the exchange here.) Senator Clinton said "I believe in reality-based politics" as a way to explain why her plan requiring every American to buy private health insurance does not regulate insurers' premiums.

Here's what she's saying to us: You must buy their insurance. And here's what she's saying to insurance companies: You can charge them whatever you want!

Mandatory purchase of private insurance is a scam, not real universal health care reform.

Hillary Clinton's first attempt at health care reform in 1993 took away public officials' will to reform health care for more than a decade. Senator Clinton's second attempt, unveiled last week, could sap their tentative new ambitions.

Sentator Clinton is triangulating health care reform by embracing the very Republican notion of "shared responsibility" pioneered by the likes of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Their common aim is to let the medical insurance complex charge what it wants and force American business, taxpayers and individuals to pay the premium.

Clinton's embrace of mandatory private health insurance purchases for every American, and her rejection of government's role in managing charges by the medical-insurance complex, is a quantum leap backward- for affordable health care reform in America. California reform efforts, for example, will turn on whether the Clinton campaign's California Chairman Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez caves to Governor Schwarzenegger's desire for mandatory purchase of private insurance.

Under Hillary Care II, the government becomes a collections agency for the private health insurance market squeezing every patient into an expensive, ill-conceived and wasteful private insurance pool. Senator Clinton's phony fix for insurer's fragmentation and waste is to digitize medical records and deploy technology, not to rein in the profiteering.

If Senator Clinton succeeds, the goal of universal health care, providing security of access to timely medical care for every American, will have morphed into a guaranteed market for undeserving private health insurers. These companies increased premiums 250% more than the rate of medical inflation.

The average health insurance premium for a family of four is just over $12,000, according to the most recent Kaiser Family Foundation yearly survey. What middle-class family making, say, $60,000 per year can afford that bill, much less the deductibles and copays to follow?

Instead of the stick of mandated private health insurance policies, Americans need the carrot of affordable health care. This means, at the very least, regulated and standardized charges by insurers, doctors, hospitals and drug companies. (No more $6 Tylenol in the hospital.)

The reason health insurance is so unaffordable today is precisely because no one is watching the costs. With standardization, insurance would be cheaper and people might both want to and be able to buy it - not forced to buy under threat of a federal tax penalty.

Sen. Clinton says she is being tough on the insurance industry, which has contributed six figures to her campaign committees, by requiring insurers to sell to everyone regardless of pre-existing condition. True, insurers say they don't want to do it, that it will raise premiums But when the customers have no alternative, price is no object.

Mandatory health insurance is a government bailout of a free market that has failed its customers. Fewer individuals and employers are buying private health insurance because it costs so much and delivers less every year. So rather than let customers demand a new and better product, Sen. Clinton's new triangulation is to force the product on us via the government's fist. It is the worst of both worlds: government-imposed, but not government-regulated.

Universal private health insurance is unaffordable for taxpayers, employers and individuals. It's a means for the junior Senator from New York to argue that she is no longer for "government-run" health care, but isn't even universal health care.

A government mandate will inevitably lead to bare-bones policies, or the mandate would be entirely cost-prohibitive. Unfortunately, "affordable" health insurance policies come with $5,000 deductibles, big co-pays, and many holes in coverage and benefits. Research by Rand shows that high-deductible policies discourage patients of moderate income from seeking preventive treatment. Low- and middle-income patients will likely have coverage they resist using until they are desperate. By then their illnesses may be far more expensive for the system to treat.

By bowing so low to the medical-insurance complex that trashed her first-lady plan, Sen. Clinton has likely put the brakes on any greater ambitions by presidential rivals and followers in statehouses across America.

In his 1996 state of the union address, President Bill Cinton ushered in the era of triangulation by declaring, "The era of big government is over." Now Senator Clinton has ended the era of government-regulated health care before it has even begun.

Comments

[zenpiper]

What few ask is whether the U.S. government should even be in the business of health care. What qualifies government officials to dictate health policy? Have we made the Federal government our Nanny? What Clinton is proposing is socialism in nice words, and it's completely un-necessary. Long ago, before the government stuck its nose into everything, we had good, affordable health care. Doctors saw everybody and few were turned away; there was "care" in healthcare. At the moment, the system is so bloated that getting a couple of aspirin in a hospital costs a fortune. No good.

[blue user]

The best part is after you've been forced to pay for health insurance, they'll just deny your claims.


I just read a story about someone who was "insured" with Blue Cross Blue Shield, they denied her claim for an emergency room visit during a miscarriage. Why? They claimed it was an "elective abortion" which wasn't covered. Imagine that, an "elective abortion" in the middle of the night in an ER.


What Hillary Clinton proposes is not universal health care, it's universal "give the insurance companies all your money" which will solve none of the problems with health care in the United States. It's quite obvious that the money given to her by health care industry lobbyists is more important to Mrs. Clinton than the health of US citizens.

[Oldchef]

Excellent post. We don't need another giveaway to big corporations. We need a government run program similar to Medicare, which has some problems but generally runs well for doctors and hospitals, as well as patients. The biggest thing is to have regulation and oversight to keep the program as affordable as possible. The squabbling today over extended health care for our children is shameful. Insure the children with a government regulated program and then insure the rest of us too!

[RickO]

I don't know why Hillary and others like her feel they need to assuage the conservatives accusation that they want to "socialize" healthcare. They should vociferously say that's precisely what we should do.

Using the same vernacular, you could say we already have socialized national defense, postal service, law enforcement, highway systems, public education, disaster recovery (sort of), securities regulation, justice and court systems, flood insurance, and even an existing healthcare infrastructure (Medicare) that millions rely on. Why is it such a stretch to say that healthcare for everyone isn't at least as important as any of those other things that we are really glad we have and happy to fund through taxes? It's a double standard.

Could you imagine if the fire department had to get permission from some idiot in a cubicle before they responded to your fire? How about if a 911 operator asked you if you had murder insurance before they sent the police to save your butt. What if you had to send every single letter by FedEx or UPS? What if there really was no Social Security or environmental protection? You could argue that these are huge messy bureaucracies but we have them and they basically work. imagine if we didn't have them. Is that the answer. Of course not!

I just don't see any argument here. It really is a scam to suggest anything other than fully socialized healthcare for every American. It is so about time.

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

if you think Hillary health-profiteering is bad, just think what Hillary war-profiteering looks like.

[Poboy]

Essentially Hillary is proposing something similar to mandated car insurance.

[RickO]

True, but the ability to legally drive is not a life and death issue. But hey, if you could get full coverage health insurance at the same price as your car insurance, it wouldn't need to be mandated. People would be lining up for it.

[NavyMom]

If you take their money, apparently it is impossible to see That Insurance Companies Are A Big Part of The Problem!

[Purple Girl]

i'm so glad the Pres and the National Committees and the media have this all figured out regarding the nomination. Because I sure don't and I think there's alot more people than they think like me.
I'm not looking for a single candidate.­I'm looking for the Interdiscplianry Team that is going to sit down and make real efforts to resolve long standing dysfunctions. Take the lumps to make it right so that our future doesnot look like our present or what appears to be our evolving race to the Democracy and World Leader BOTTOM. I'm ready for one of these 'New direction" cnadidates (SEn & Reps) to begin asking the UN to proceed with the War Crime charges against this admin and those who have helped push this War agenda.The­n We can take back our Gov't and begin treason charges against those who have supported the rape of our freedoms and rights guaranteed by our founding laws. You want to see these folks straighten up? Start levying charges. I'd like to see an Organization begin the call for a real change in direction, anything short is BS

[avergejoe]

Great post.