JEFF COHEN: Will Healthcare Timidity Trip Up Hillary Clinton?

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Published on Friday, February 2, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

Will Healthcare Timidity Trip Up Hillary Clinton?

by Jeff Cohen

 
It’s conventional wisdom that if Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign falters with Democratic activists in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, it will be over the issue of the Iraq war. And her vacillations on the war.

Yet the dividing-line issue in the upcoming primaries may turn out to be not Iraq, but healthcare. And just like on Iraq, the Democratic base is in no mood for timidity and half-way measures and vague rhetoric. Most rank-and-file Democrats support government-provided national health insurance: enhanced Medicare for All.

And that’s no secret to the candidates. This is how the Washington Post described Hillary Clinton’s recent, maiden voyage into Iowa as a candidate:


In keeping with her expressed desire to hold a “conversation with Iowans,” Clinton asked at one point for a show of hands from the audience, asking them to declare whether they preferred an employer-based system of insurance, a system that mandates all individuals to purchase insurance, with help from the government if necessary, or one modeled on the Medicare system. Overwhelmingly the audience favored moving toward a Medicare-like system for all Americans.

A show of hands in almost any roomful of Democratic activists will produce the same result: they want a single-payer “Medicare-like system for all Americans.” According to the Post, Clinton told the Iowa group: “I’m not ready to be specific until I hear from people.”

more:
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0202-29.htm

[lvx35]

1. Why I don't bitch about Hillary on this....

Despite all the stuff I don't agree with, she seems serious to ME (though not the author here) about healthcare, and that is huge. 200,000 Americans DIE every year due to totally treatable cancers, things that could have been prevented with access to health care....And Hillary has been working on this a long time...Its true what the author points out about her plan not being perfect, but think; they didn't have the power to put it through, even with those compromises. Would it have gone through easier with LESS compromises? I'm not sure it would. So I don't hold this against her.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

2. She set the cause of universal healthcare back by a decade

with her sell-out to the insurance companies.

She should have listened to Wellstone's urging at the time-and went with the obvious answer of a single payer program.

But Aetna donates money to campaigns, so you know what happens...

[lvx35]

3. How would that have helped the cause?

Do you think that the single payer program would have gone through where the other did not? That's what I'm not seeing here.