Hillary's health-care nightmare

WASHINGTON -- No sooner had Hillary Clinton unveiled her latest plan for universal health-care coverage last week than the Club for Growth was denouncing it as another attempt at socialized medicine.

The title over the economic-growth advocacy group's statement said it all: "It's Baaaaack: HillaryCare Redux."

The New York senator and clear front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination is known for many things. But in the recent annals of federal-reform plans, she is best known as the architect of a fiendishly complicated, government-run health-care insurance system that was so unpopular the Democratic-run Congress refused to bring it up for a vote.

In her second try at wholesale reform, Clinton says she's learned from her past mistakes. But for all her centrist-sounding makeovers and political camouflage, she remains a big-government liberal to the core. Her latest plan would put the all-powerful federal bureaucracy in charge of our private health-care system, lock, stock and barrel.

The elements of an expanding government regulatory nightmare are all here: massive government subsidies, higher income taxes and employer mandates to provide employee health-care coverage no matter what the costs, a sweeping mandate that requires all Americans to buy insurance and a regulatory takeover of the health-care system from the states by the feds.

"With each passing day, the collectivist nightmare that is a Hillary Clinton presidency is crystallizing with frightening clarity," said Club for Growth president Pat Toomey.

The plan she has proposed provides scant details, preferring to paint her campaign proposal with a broad brush. The details, she said, would be worked out by Democratic legislators that rule over health-care policy, people like Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and New York Rep. Charlie Rangel.

But even at this early stage, her plan is riddled with ominous signs that HillaryCare II could be just as bad as the ill-fated plan of 1994 that many in her party could not stomach.

How much would it cost taxpayers? Clinton's price tag is $110 billion a year, but analysts say her plan will cost a lot more than that. A similar plan offered by Sen. John Kerry in his 2004 presidential campaign would have cost about $1.5 trillion over 10 years at a minimum.

Then there are the employer mandates in her plan with the heavy hand of the government forcing businesses to provide health-insurance plans for their workers. But forcing all small businesses to provide health-care insurance benefits for their employees would be a disaster for most of them.

Most small businesses operate precariously on the profit margin and government-mandated costs would bankrupt them.

ne of the least noticed but biggest policymaking changes in her plan would transfer health-care regulatory authority from states to the federal government. "I think it ultimately leads to more government-run health care. There is no way around that," said Charles Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals.

Then there is the specter of price controls in her plan, which would invariably lead to health-care shortages, longer waiting periods and poorer service. "In her explanation of the federal rules, Mrs. Clinton says that national rules would help insure universal coverage, preventing persons from being charged 'excessive' premiums, while preventing 'excessive' profits on the part of insurance companies," said Robert Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation.

"There are no explicit price controls, but obviously federal officials will be charged with making sure these objectives are met," Moffit said in an analysis of the Clinton plan.

Clinton insists she would let people keep the private plans they have now, but part of her plan would allow Americans to buy into federal health-care plans -- putting the feds into direct competition with private-sector health insurance, which is the backbone of the health-care industry.

"If there is a public alternative to the private market, the public market is going to have a hard time competing," Kahn told me.

This isn't the direction that health-care reform should be taking. "Instead of socialized medicine," Club for Growth's Toomey said, "we should be deregulating the health-insurance industry and opening it up to innovative reform that increases competition and lowers prices, making health care more affordable for everyone."

For example: Arizona Rep. John Shadegg's Healthcare Choice Act, which would allow insurance companies to comply with any state's regulatory rules and let them to sell plans in all 50 states, is a needed reform.

Another solution to help bring down premium prices is to eliminate the costly web of government health-care mandates that have driven up prices beyond the pocketbook of many Americans. Let insurance companies offer a broader choice of plans under a larger range of prices.

In the meantime, Hillary Clinton's second stab at health-care reform has led to many of the same complaints heard in 1994. Maybe she didn't learn from her mistakes after all.

If it survives a supreme court challenge, do you really think that Bill and Hill would submit to the same “care” as they would foist upon us?

***

I think we all know the answer to that one. And the same applies to members of Congress among others.

What fool would vote for the government taking over his health care after seeing the incredible mess that Medicare has become? LBJ lied (surprise,surprise) when he said that Medicare would max out at about $9 billion a year. It’s now $418.3 billion, and that’s going up dramatically every year as Boomers climb on the gravy train. It is slated to go bust before Social Security goes bankrupt.
Government can’t run any program efficiently and without tons of fraud. Insanity is repeating the same action over and over and expecting a different result.

If we don’t elect a Republican as President next year, then this country will be in deep s***. I don’t care who the Republican nominee is next year, that person would make a much better President than Hillary Clinton. We had better not get a rerun of 2006 next year, with conservatives sitting out the election because they don’t think that the Republicans are conservative enough. We can’t afford to let Clinton be elected President because if she gets into office and if the Democrats keep control of the House and Senate, her health care plan will become law and we will all pay the price. And, finally, let’s not forget that her plan would cover abortion (just as her previous plan would have), so unless you want taxpayer funded abortions for anyone who wants them, we had better defeat Hillary next year.

Baloney.

A Republican minority in Congress would be a vocal opponent of anything proposed by a Democratic majority with a Democrat in the White House. Remember -- this is exactly the combination that helped put HillaryCare I out of its misery, and led to the 1994 Republican sweep in both houses of Congress.

A Republican in the White House, on the other hand -- especially a big-government, leftist totalitarian like Rudy Giuliani -- would gladly sign anything that comes his was out of a Democrat Congress on this.

Besides that, even once you’re on Medicare, you still need to get supplemental insurance. What Hillarycare will do is provide a very low level of coverage to everyone at a huge cost to taxpayers and then everyone will need another layer of private insurance—the supplemental—on top of that. In a few years we’ll hear sob stories about all the people who can’t afford supplemental insurance.

Either that or the rigid and punative rules in the 1993 plan where everything is state-run and doctors are only allowed to work within the plan. When that happens, and it will all be incremental, the best doctors will go off-shore and anyone who wants decent care will have to go to where the doctors are and pay. That won’t be a problem for wealthy people, but it will be a problem for average Americans. It will be a nightmare.

Look at the mess other government run health programs have created. Even the flagship VA hospital, Walter Reed, cared for patients in appalling conditions that would never have been tolerated at any private hospital. A visit to any Indian Health Services Hospital is like going for health care in the third world.

I wouldn’t count on a Republican minority in Congress being able to prevent the passage of this health care legislation, especially since it appears to be less radical than the plan that Hillary advanced during her husband’s administration.

It is hard to see how anyone could prefer having Hillary in the White House to having a Republican in it. Hillary differs from all of the Republican frontrunners on several major policy issues. Any Republican who sits out the 2008 election or votes for a third party candidate because he thinks that the Republican nominee is too liberal is effectively voting Democrat. And I don’t see how any conservative could think that it would be good for the country to elect a Democrat as president.

I don’t see how any conservative could think that it would be good for the country to elect a Democrat as president.

And in light of what has happened in California under Arnold Shwarzenegger, I don't know how any Republican could think that compromising principles to support a candidate simply because of his party affiliation will make any difference at all.

Most small businesses operate precariously on the profit margin and government-mandated costs would bankrupt them.

Hillary: "I can't be responsible for every under-capitalized company in the country."

This is EXACTLY why the plan is designed this way. We can't have the peasants creating their own wealth and freedom by running their own small businesses.

I have owned and run a small corporation for about 15 years. The second Hillary is inaugurated, I'm closing my doors and retiring because the profits will ALL be sucked up by new taxes and mandates, and the bureaucracy will become even more stifling than it is today.

What has happened in California really doesn’t apply here. The party affiliation of the President of the U.S. matters. Democrat presidents tend to be more liberal across the board than Republican presidents.

If Hillary is elected President and if the Democrats keep control of the Congress, her health care plan will be passed because the Democrats will think that the country has moved leftward and that it has given them a mandate to implement liberal laws.

It is all well and good to talk about standing on one’s principles but abstaining from the election because the Republican candidate isn’t “pure” enough or conservative enough will only ensure that the Democrats win and this will just set the conservative cause back for years to come.

That's what they tried to do in 1993, but they couldn't even implement HillaryCare with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. And the Clinton Administration's attempt to implement liberal policies resulted in a historic repudiation on Election Day in 1994.

It has nothing to do with purity and everything to do with pragmatism. I cited the California example because it illustrates just how unprincipled Republicans can be, too.

A GOP White House and GOP Congress passed a Medicare prescription drug plan that will end up being one of the largest entitlement programs this country has ever had. Do you think there's a chance in hell the Republican Party would have allowed a Democratic administration do something like this?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.