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Sen. Clinton details plan for health care
According to an article published in the Chicago Tribune and
reprinted in the Seattle Times, Democratic
front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton offered a plan Monday to
provide health insurance to all Americans, positioning all
of the party's major candidates as advocates for ambitious
programs of either universal or near-universal health care.
Thirteen years after presiding as first lady over a failed
attempt at a national health-care plan, Clinton presented a
plan that avoided some of the political pitfalls that
contributed to the demise of the Clinton administration's
health plan in 1994. Unlike her previous effort, she would
allow Americans satisfied with their current
health-insurance plans to continue their coverage and would
avoid a large new federal bureaucracy.
The groundwork is now laid for a general-election contest
that will provide a clear choice between the two parties on
health care.
Republican candidates offer tax credits to lower the cost of
health insurance, with private markets relatively
undisturbed, while Democratic candidates urge a greater
government role in guaranteeing availability of health
insurance for all. The Democratic candidates would pay for
their programs by eliminating Bush administration tax cuts
for high-income earners and through projected savings from
new efficiencies they say their plans would create in the
health-care system.
Clinton would offer federal subsidies to businesses and
individuals to reduce the cost of health care, particularly
for lower-income families, while imposing a new federal
requirement that every American purchase health-insurance
coverage.
Her approach echoes state-based health-care plans proposed
by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and
then-Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts that require
individuals to buy health insurance much as many states now
require drivers to buy auto insurance.
Her Democratic rivals also borrow heavily from the
Republican governors' approach, though unlike Clinton and
John Edwards, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., would mandate
coverage only for children, not adults. As with the
California and Massachusetts state plans, the major
Democratic candidates would all rely on individuals to
obtain coverage by buying it, or through their employers
provide subsidies for coverage and allow the public access
to government-based insurance programs.
"All of the Democratic candidates have now come out with big
plans," said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family
Foundation, a nonpartisan health-care-policy foundation.
"Those plans in the end are going to look more similar than
different to Democratic voters in the primaries and, despite
differences, are more similar than different."
The new proposal would not allow insurance companies to deny
coverage to people who apply and pay their premium
regardless of pre-existing conditions. Insurers also would
have to standardize premiums so they couldn't charge more
based on age, gender or occupation.
Large employers would be required to offer health insurance
or help pay the cost of coverage. The proposal also would
offer tax assistance for small businesses to provide
coverage and give tax credits to lower-income individuals to
purchase insurance.
The linchpin of the plan is to require all Americans to
obtain insurance so that relatively healthy people, who are
less expensive to insure, balance out the cost of covering
older and sicker people.
The Clinton campaign estimated the program's cost at $110
billion, which would be made up through modernization of
technology, constraining prescription-drug costs and
discontinuing President Bush's tax breaks for households
making more than $250,000 annually. |
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