Hillary Care or Who Cares

Hillary Clinton, during the Clinton administration, was appointed to a special commission to help save the medical system.  At the time, she was destroyed by the special lobbyists from the American Medical Association and big pharmacy and insurance.  She has since learned her lesson.  What was the lesson?  Well, you don't want to buck the system or you get smashed in the mouth.  It was a highly unfortunate turn of events, because she has now become a candidate with a large bankroll from insurance and pharmaceutical.  All of the money aside, let's look at some of her more prominent statements on the healthcare reform issue.

The American Health Choices Plan gives Americans the choice to preserve their existing coverage, while offering new choices to those with insurance, to the 47 million people in the United States without insurance, and the tens of millions more at risk of losing coverage.

• The Same Choice of Health Plan Options that Members of Congress Receive:Americans can keep their existing coverage or access the same menu of quality private insurance options that their Members of Congress receive through a new Health Choices Menu, established without any new bureaucracy as part of the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP). In addition to the broad array of private options that Americans can choose from, they will be offered the choice of a public plan option similar to Medicare. 
  
  
• A Guarantee of Quality Coverage: The new array of choices offered in the Menu will provide benefits at least as good as the typical plan offered to Members of Congress, which includes mental health parity and usually dental coverage.

Overall, this is a wonderful statement, but what is the part that says "at least as good" and what exactly does that mean.  This all sounds too difficult.  Why not just give everyone the same plan and do away with the other options.......the answer.....big insurance doesn't want this.

Americans who are satisfied with the coverage they have today can keep it, while benefiting from lower premiums and higher quality.

• Reducing Costs: By removing hidden taxes, stressing prevention and a focus on efficiency and modernization, the plan will improve quality and lower costs. 
  
  
• Strengthening Security: The plan ensures that job loss or family illnesses will never lead to a loss of coverage or exorbitant costs. 
  
  
• End to Unfair Health Insurance Discrimination: By creating a level-playing field of insurance rules across states and markets, the plan ensures that no American is denied coverage, refused renewal, unfairly priced out of the market, or forced to pay excessive insurance company premiums.

Who is happy with their current insurance plan?  Ahhhh, noone.  How are you going to eliminate insurance discrimination; that sounds like chin-music to me.  

Relying on consumers or the government alone to fix the system has unintended consequences, like scaled-back coverage or limited choices. This plan ensures that all who benefit from the system share in the responsibility to fix its shortcomings.

• Insurance and Drug Companies: insurance companies will end discrimination based on pre-existing conditions or expectations of illness and ensure high value for every premium dollar; while drug companies will offer fair prices and accurate information. 
  
  
• Individuals: will be required to get and keep insurance in a system where insurance is affordable and accessible. 
  
  
• Providers: will work collaboratively with patients and businesses to deliver high-quality, affordable care. 
  
  
• Employers: will help financing the system; large employers will be expected to provide health insurance or contribute to the cost of coverage: small businesses will receive a tax credit to continue or begin to offer coverage. 
  
  
• Government: will ensure that health insurance is always affordable and never a crushing burden on any family and will implement reforms to improve quality and lower cost.

Sounds like they are going to make everyone do something.  You must play nice, you must take care of yourself.  McDonalds, you must serve healthy foods.  Doritos, you will not make those delicious chips, or at least refrain from marketing them to the obese.  You simply cannot tell people what to do and then leave them to their devices.  I mean, just say it, I want to provide Universal Coverage.  She wasn't afraid to say this ten years ago.  Oh yeah, that was before she was punched in the mouth.  Before they made fun of her cankles.

Senator Clinton’s plan will:

• Provide Tax Relief to Ensure Affordability: Working families will receive a refundable tax credit to help them afford high-quality health coverage. 
  
  
• Limit Premium Payments to a Percentage of Income: The refundable tax credit will be designed to prevent premiums from exceeding a percentage of family income, while maintaining consumer price consciousness in choosing health plans. 
  
  
• Create a New Small Business Tax Credit: To make it easier-not harder-for small businesses to create new jobs with health coverage, a new health care tax credit for small businesses will provide an incentive for job-based coverage. 
  
  
• Strengthen Medicaid and CHIP: The Plan will fix the holes in the safety net to ensure that the most vulnerable populations receive affordable, quality care. 
  
  
• Launch a Retiree Health Legacy Initiative: A new tax credit for qualifying private and public retiree health plans will offset a significant portion of catastrophic expenditures, so long as savings are dedicated to workers and competitiveness.

All of this sounds good.  I especially like the small business tax credit.  Fixing the holes in Medicaid?  More like fixing a black hole.  Medicaid is a disaster.  Taxpayers pay for the uninsured to have babys while they just continue to have babys becuase Medicaid keeps them dependant on the system.  This is not a safety net, it is a hair net, and you know how well those work.

• Most Savings Come Through Lowering Spending Due to Quality and Modernization: Over half the savings come from the public savings generated from Senator Clinton’s broader agenda to modernize the heath systems and reduce wasteful health spending. 
  
  
• A Net Tax Cut for American Taxpayers: The plan offers tens of millions of Americans a new tax credit to make premiums affordable-which more than offsets the increased revenues from the Plan’s provisions to limit the employer tax exclusion for health care and discontinue portions of the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000. Thus, the plan provides a net tax cut for American taxpayers. 
  
  
• Making the Employer Tax Exclusion for Health Care Fairer: The plan protects the current exclusion from taxes of employer-provided health premiums, but limits the exclusion for the high-end portion of very generous plans for those making over $250,000.

So, another plan that is hopelessly lost, but making good time.  The candidates are too worried about their war chests to really get on with the issues.  In America, you buy your way into the White House.  Patients sit it ER's for eight hours.  It costs thousands of dollars to the tax payers to fund their own personal medical plans and then when they need them.....they get denied.  Has anyone seen the movie SiCKO?  I am not a big fan of the director, but he exposed the system.  It makes you SiCKO to watch the documentary, and it does so, because it's true and we all know.  They know it, you know it, and the insurance companies know it.