New York Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, who is seeking to become the first female President of the United States, plans to reintroduce parts of her healthcare proposal, which was never enacted by Congress, according to comments from her husband, former President Bill Clinton. According to a report on Onenewsnow.com, the former president recently made the remarks about the healthcare proposal, dubbed, “HillaryCare,” 14 years ago when it was first introduced, to Democratic operatives. A healthcare reform expert said it would be unwise for the presidential candidate to push for socialized medicine during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Gracie Marie Turner is president of a nonprofit research group that focuses on healthcare issues, the Galen Institute. She says that many Americans are against socialized medicine, and there were a lot of people that felt the original “HillaryCare” was a “huge overreach of government involvement” in the healthcare issue. She believes a lot of evidence suggests Americans were not pleased with the original proposal.
Gracie Turner said it is debatable whether Americans would be more receptive to a healthcare proposal from Senator Hillary Clinton than they were 14 years ago when she was First Lady. She said such healthcare proposals take a lot of healthcare choices away from Americans, and many Americans do not like their choices to be restricted.
Gracie Turner said many healthcare proposals, like the one she believes Senator Clinton may reintroduce, require that all Americans have healthcare coverage. She said the problem is that the proposals become a mandate on businesses to pay for the coverage, and a mandate on taxpayers, who must pay additional taxes to pay for the uninsured.
The healthcare expert said another problem of healthcare proposals like those of Senator Hillary Clinton is they put mandates on the healthcare itself. She said then it becomes an issue whether each healthcare treatment will be covered under the new plan or not. Gracie Marie Turner said she believes many Americans will see “intrusiveness in government” under the new “HillaryCare” proposal. She said she things many Americans do not want to go in that direction.
President Bush, during his State of the Union proposal Tuesday, announced his own plan to give people an incentive to buy healthcare insurance. Those individuals who do would receive large tax benefits.
In 1992, when President Bill Clinton, who had campaigned largely on healthcare reform, established the Task Force on National Healthcare Reform, which was chaired by his wife, at that time First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. The purpose was to come up with a universal healthcare program for all Americans.
The proposal, of more than 1,000 pages, was introduced in Congress on September 22, 1993. According to the website, www.wikipedia.org, the proposal required employers to provide insurance through closely-regulated Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO’s).
Many liberal politicians welcomed the plan. Many conservatives, libertarians, and those in the health insurance organized a national campaign against it. They criticized it for being too bureaucratic and restrictive of patient choices. Many Democrats introduced their own healthcare plans, and “HillaryCare” was never enacted.
This election will see whether or not Senator Hillary Clinton does indeed reintroduce her healthcare proposal, and the public’s reaction to it, if she does.
