HillaryCare 2.0

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The first time Hillary Clinton was "in office" she tried to come up with a plan for universal health care for all Americans. I was only 14 when Clinton was the head of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, but I remember discussing the speech that her husband, President Bill Clinton, gave in September 1993 in my ninth grade civics class.

He spoke about how millions of Americans "are just a pink slip away from losing their health insurance, and one serious illness away from losing all their savings." My family was uninsured in 1993. My father was self-employed and couldn't afford the extremely high costs of private insurance.

President Clinton's statement is still true today. Forty-seven million Americans are uninsured. These 47 million Americans cannot afford the cost of coverage, and Hillary Clinton believes her health care plan is going to fix the corrupt system that is health insurance.

The failure of Hillary's first attempt at health care reform was largely due to several conservatives, libertarians and insurance companies lobbying against her "Health Security" plan, calling it overly bureaucratic and restrictive of patient choice.

There's the word that makes people swoon and cringe simultaneously: Choice. It's an interesting rhetoric, as Ezra Klein said in a Slate article.

What is now being dubbed HillaryCare 2.0, Clinton appears to have learned her lesson, calling it the "American Health Choices Plan" or "Individual Mandate" plan. Clinton assures Americans will be able to keep their current health coverage if they wish to do so, while allowing businesses and their employees more choices of health plans.

Crystal Patterson of HillaryClinton.com blogs about some of the highlights of Clinton's plan:

* Affordable: Unlike the current health system where insurance premiums send people into bankruptcy, the plan provides tax credits for working families to help them cover their costs. The tax credits will ensure that working families never have to pay more than a limited percentage of their income for healthcare.

* Available: No discrimination. The insurance companies can't deny you coverage if you have a pre-existing condition.

* Reliable: It's portable. If you change or lose your job, you keep your health care.

As for small business owners, like my father, Patterson says "Hillary would give tax credits to small businesses that provide healthcare to their workers to help defray their coverage costs. This will make small businesses more competitive and help create good jobs with health benefits that will stay here in the US."

This plan sounds too good to be true! Am I the only one who is skeptical? Hardly.

Rich Lowry writes:

Clinton's plan would make this ramshackle system worse. She proposes more regulations on insurers and a mandate on large employers to provide insurance coverage or pay a tax. The regulations will make insurance even more expensive, while the employer mandate would only augment the current senseless system of people getting insurance through their jobs.

Ezra Klein writes:

If I were going to not like Hillary Clinton's health care plan, this would be the case I'd make. As it is, I think the areas in which she's vague are not areas in which she'll fail: No politician will create an individual mandate plan and then not offer adequate subsidies. The resulting outrage from families who couldn't afford healthcare but were legally obligated to buy it would destroy their career, doom their reelection, and kill the plan.

Klein also wrote about the HillaryCare ad now airing in New Hampshire.

Darleen's Place writes:

I won't argue that there are not serious problems with how our current health industry delivers its services and products; however, much of the imbalance is the direct result of governmental policies ...

... policies that Hillary! wants to expand and entrench.

Katherine Kersten of Think Again writes:

"Clinton seems to understand that her new plan must involve no trade-offs, and promise something for everyone. Hillary Care II will apparently require insurance companies to insure everyone. Aides claim that it will mean lower costs, and higher quality health care, across the board... ...Is such a health care heaven possible?"

Calmer Than You Are writes:

"Americans like choice and Hitlery knows that so she is pretending that her plan gives us choice. We can