The "HIllary is gonna force me to give money to evil insurance companies" canard.

[rinsd]

The American Health Choices Plan preserves existing health insurance and offers new choices to those
with insurance and to the 47 million people in the United States without insurance. It ensures
portability so that Americans do not lose coverage when they change or lose their jobs. Americans will
have three options:

1) Keep Current Health Care Coverage: Americans who are satisfied with the coverage they
have today can keep it. Nothing would interfere with their insurance or their relationship
with their health care provider. The only significant change they will see will be lower costs
and higher quality health care as the modernization initiatives to improve value in our
health care system take effect and as the achievement of seamless coverage reduces the
hidden tax on premiums that comes from current cost-shifting.

2) A Choice of Health Plan Options: Businesses, employees, and the uninsured will have the
option of buying group insurance through a new Health Choices Menu. This Menu will
give all Americans the same set of insurance options that their Member of Congress has.
Without creating new bureaucracy, the Menu will be part of the Federal Employee Health
Benefit Program (FEHBP), which includes numerous, high-quality private health insurance
options. The Health Choices Menu will have the purchasing power of millions of
Americans in securing high-quality and affordable insurance. States will also have the
option of banding together to offer the same type of choices in a region of the country if
they wish. The benefits will be as good as those offered to Members of Congress. Such
coverage includes mental health parity, and many plans offer dental coverage. In addition,
as a condition of doing business with the federal government, insurers must cover highpriority
preventive services that experts agree are proven and effective. This focus on
prevention will improve health and lower costs in the long run.

3) A Choice of a Public Plan Option: In addition to the array of private insurance choices
offered, the Health Choices Menu will also provide Americans with a choice of a public plan
option, which could be modeled on the traditional Medicare program, but would cover the
same benefits as guaranteed in private plan options in the Health Choices Menu without
creating a new bureaucracy. The alternative will compete on a level playing field with
traditional private insurance plans. It will provide a more affordable option, in part through
greater administrative savings. It will not be funded through the Medicare trust fund.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/healthcareplan/americanhealthchoicesplan.pdf

See option 3. If you find yourself in the financial position that you can make the ideological decision to pay health care costs out of pocket rather than give money to evil insurance companies and recoil at Hillary's mandate simply join the public plan and help pave a path towards single payer.

And it should be stated Obama's plan has near identical elements (the basic difference is a mandate on the childless)

[DJ13]

1. Neither candidate has a good plan

As long as for profit insurance companies are involved theres no way to achieve universal coverage.

The reason I still support Obama on this issue is because he seems more flexible towards going the extra distance in moving towards a true one payer system than Hillary would be.

She seems rigid like Bush in refusing to compromise, and I've had enough of that kind of President.

[monktonman]

2. Man, your really workin it arent you?

I STILL dont want my wages garnished.
For all the obvious reasons.
Spin away!!!

[rodeodance]

5. We all need to think of the "common good".

[Vinca]

9. Whose common good - the people or the insurance industry? nt

[rodeodance]

13. the people---all people. BO leaves out 15 million.

[MadHound]

19. And how did the Hillary camp come up with that number?

Is there some sort of basis for that figure, or did they simply snatch it out of thin air. Somehow I suspect the latter, but hey, if you've got a link to prove that it is a valid figure, post it please.

[Gloria]

3. Yeah, Republican talking points from the mouth of Obama are so

PROGRESSIVE!!! :sarcasm:

[Shakespeare]

4. "Obama's plan has near identical elements" Mmhm. Except for the wage garnishment.

I'll give Obama's program a slight edge (though Kucinich and Edwards each had better plans). But no way in hell do I think you should garnish wages, as Hillary herself has said she'd do. That'll affect the poorest Americans, and would be absolutely devastating.

[rodeodance]

7. Then pay up!!!

[Shakespeare]

14. Oh, bullshit. I HAVE insurance. It's the guy working a minimum wage job who can't afford to buy in

....who's going to have his meager wages garnished, and it will destroy him.

If you can't see that, if you can't HONESTLY admit that this element of your candidate's health plan is a bad idea, then your head is as far up your ass as it can go.

[rinsd]

20. How about you stop deliberately mischaracterizing the plan first?

Wage garnishment has been discussed as a element of mandate enforcement it not a locked in feature.

I notice you seem to have no problems with Obama's enforcement measures against parents under his mandate.



Ezra Klein had some interesting thoughts on this

An "automatic sign-up," a la Medicare, would still force Americans into health care they may not want to pay for, or may feel overburdened by. Some seniors feel overburdened by Medicare's cost-sharing now. Meanwhile, Obama not only has a mandate for kids in his own health care plan -- what if the parents can't pay, one might ask? -- but he said, in last night's debate, "If people are gaming the system, there are ways we can address that. By, for example, making them pay some of the back premiums for not having gotten it in the first place." That, of course, is exactly what a mandate does. Gaming the system, in this context, means not purchasing health care. And Obama is now threatening to force them to pay back premiums. That's a harsher penalty than anything Clinton has proposed.

Meanwhile, here's how Clinton should have explained the problem in Obama's plan: A central tenet of his proposal is that " No insurance companies will be allowed to discriminate because of a previous bout with cancer or some other pre-existing illness." You literally cannot have that rule without some mechanism forcing everyone to buy in, as the healthy will stay out. So one of two things will happen during the legislative process: Either a mandate will be added, or the prohibition against preexisting will be dropped, or limited to Obama's National Health Insurance Exchange. What will happen in that case is that the Exchange will largely become the domain of the public insurer, which will be a catch-all for the ill and unhealthy. Meanwhile, most insurers will operate outside the Exchange -- you don't have to buy insurance within the Exchange, it's just an option -- and use the existence of the Exchange to enhance their ability to skim the healthy and young and fob off the sick and old. A mandate is not how you cover everyone, it's how you force insurers to cover everyone, and discriminate against no one. And even if you don't have a mandate in your plan, to argue against universal mechanisms because they force people to buy insurance is supremely damaging to the long-term goal, which Obama professes support for, of some system in which everyone is, and has to be, covered.

Obama is, of course, right that affordability is an issue, and needs to be in place before a mandate. But what a mandate does is, additionally, force you to think about affordability. The Clinton campaign does that, with a plan that limits total expenditures to a percentage of income. Not a dollar amount, a percentage. If you make very little, your total expenditure, by law, can't be very much. Obama's plan has a more traditional subsidy mechanism that simply goes on a sliding scale by income, and given how much money goes towards his reinsurance plan, he's actually got less in there for subsidies than Clinton. So while he's warning that she'll make you pay even if you can't afford it, she's actually got the right affordability mechanisms in there -- she keeps it to a small percentage of income. By pretending her plan lacks those and is just a mandate, he's misrepresenting its fundamental premise, in much the way the Clinton campaign misrepresented his arguments on Social Security taxes.

In the end, his plan is not universal, does not attempt to be, and is probably less generous in its affordability provisions than Clinton's. And even so, I wouldn't really care, as it's still a pretty good plan, except that he's decided to respond to the inadequacies of his own policy by fear-mongering against not only better policy, but the type of policy he's probably going to have to eventually adopt. It's very, very short-sighted.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=02&year=2008&base_name=health_care_debate_mandates_as

[rinsd]

15. So why is Edwards plan with its mandate better than Obama's?

I love how Obamatons are really running with the wage garnishment non issue.

You guys must have loved the end of the death tax.

:eyes:

[Shakespeare]

18. Newsflash: I'm not an Obama supporter.

My, my, my. The assumptions that are jumped upon around here boggle the mind.

The wage garnishment is a HUGE issue to poor Americans. If you can't see that or won't admit that, then you need help.

[rinsd]

21. Yes I agree its a very effective though deceitful talking point.

I was refrring to you calling Edwards a better plan than Obama's (even though he had mandates and penalties for not enrolling including wage garnishment and withholding kids from school) even though Edwards plan is alot closer to Hillary;s than Obama's.

You can understand my mistaken impression of your candidate support with you grabbing onto a rw talking point that is being pushed by the Obama campaign with both hands.

[Shakespeare]

22. It's not a RW talking point. It's from Clinton's own lips.

But go ahead and try to explain it away. Her plan has some excellent provisions; this, however, is NOT one of them.

[rinsd]

25. The focus on a single but controversial enforcement mechanism is a rw TP.

[tired_old_fireman]

16. I don't think it effects the poorest Americans

Unless I'm misreading her plan, the poorest Americans have significant help to pay for coverage.

[rodeodance]

6. REC

[sandnsea]

8. She still won't say how much

and until she says "how much", she shouldn't be proposing to garnish anybody's wages. Only somebody totally out of touch with how difficult it is to make ends meet would propose such a thing - and then fucking LIE to low income people and tell them she's guaranteeing them something.

[rodeodance]

12. get rid of

your utter hate and maybe I/some can talk with you?

[jgraz]

10. The fact is that BOTH of their plans suck ass

We all know what the real solution is, so arguing between two almost identical crappy alternatives is a waste of time -- especially since neither plan will be enacted without a LOT of input from congress.

My *hope* with Obama is that he sweeps enough progressive dems into office that his fight will come from the left.

[MadHound]

11. What naivete'

Under this plan, it is almost guaranteed that the American people will see a rise in their insurance rates. Perhaps not initially, but certainly in the relatively near future if this plan is enacted. What Hillary's plan is doing is handing the insurance industry a monopoly, and has there been any monopoly in our history that hasn't jacked up their prices? This will be especially true for a monopoly that is enforced by the penalty of law(and possibly the threat of not being able to get employment) if you don't buy in.

As far as not creating a new bureaucracy, give me a fucking break! You're going to be creating a plan to service hundreds of millions of people, and you honestly think that layer upon layer of bureaucracy won't be added? How naive'.

Oh, and I notice that you're not including the fact that Hillary is promising the insurance industry will be getting additional millions of our dollars on top of this monopoly.

Sorry, but this is a horrible plan, and yes, the thing that stinks for most people is that yes, it will be mandatory.

[LiberalAndProud]

17. There are legitimate concerns.

Is there a lifetime benefit cap?
Does the cost of my insurance go up exponentially as I get older?

Who decides what is covered and what is not beyond preventive services?

What if I need that extra money so I can put gas in my car?
Who decides what is affordable?
Where am I going to get the money to cover the deductible?
Will I be taxed on the dollars that I am required to spend?

Why should a for-profit enterprise profit from my fear of misfortune?

How do you sell a mandated expenditure to a people who are already overextended to the breaking point?
If you can't sell it, what have you accomplished?

[anonymous171]

23. Imagine the RW attacks:

Hillarycare=Commiecare

They already have her pegged (falsely) as some kind of "socialist/communist." This would only play into their plans.

[cooolandrew]

24. Barack has the same plan that congress get but no mandate. Plus..

Plus the thihg that will reduce the cost is that theDemocrats will pay part of the cost to make it cheaper, so what happens if repubs return to power they won't cover the cost and you will have an expensive plan by mandate. The same will be true of the Barack plan but you could then opt out. The mandate idea is fantatic for genuine not for profit universal healthcare but sadly not what they are offering it is universal health insurance.