Hillary's Heath Care Sham Won't Cure What Ails Us

Posted by TRex at 5:58 AM on September 18, 2007.

This post, written by TRex, originally appeared on FireDogLake

You know, Hillary, we need to talk. Today you unveiled your shiny new health plan and I have to say that I am wildly underwhelmed.

First we need to get something out of the way. For you to proclaim that your plan provides, "Universal Health Care" is a decided misnomer. "Universal Health Insurance" might be more like it.

Universal Health Care is what they have in England and Canada and Spain and Germany and Japan and, well, every civilized nation in the world but ours. It's single payer health care provided free of charge with no need for interference by a greed-crazed insurance and pharmaceutical industry. Is that so freaking hard to understand?

Hillary Clinton yesterday set out an ambitious $110bn (£55bn) plan to introduce universal healthcare in the US more than 10 years after her earlier failed attempt.

Ms Clinton, who is one of the frontrunners to win the Democratic nomination for next year's presidential race, proposed a package that would open the way for health insurance for 47 million Americans at present without cover.

And that would be great, if private health insurance in this country didn't already suck for air.

Senator, your plan is basically a national version of Republican Mitt Romney's "Universal Health Care" plan for Massachusetts, which has still left thousands in that state uninsured and even more struggling to make the payments on their new policies, which they are now required to have by law, but which may not pay them one thin dime should they actually become sick or hurt. What you're trying to pass off here as some kind of bold new way forward is just another bureaucratic nightmare in the making, as the already staggeringly inefficient insurance corporations struggle to take on the millions of new clients and patients. That'll work. That'll work just fine...for rich people like you and your husband and the Bush family.

Is there anybody here who believes that this plan wasn't conceived and dictated to Senator Clinton by passels of high-end lobbyists for the insurance industry? Yeah? Well, I've got some sports memorabilia in a hotel room in Vegas that I'll sell you. No, really, it's mine. We just need to go in there with our guns drawn to get it.

You go first.

Tagged as: health care, hillary clinton, romney, cato institute

TRex is a regular blogger for FireDogLake.