Clinton and Edwards open the back door (to single payer Nat'l health)

[rodeodance]

Forum Name Health
Topic subject Clinton and Edwards open the back door (to single payer Nat'l health) By Maggie Mahar
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=222x27573#27573
27573, Clinton and Edwards open the back door (to single payer Nat'l health) By Maggie Mahar
Posted by papau on Tue Nov-13-07 08:34 AM

POLICY: Clinton and Edwards open the back door By Maggie Mahar (blogging at The Century Foundation)


In Thursday’s Wall Street Journal former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney underlined what is most exciting about Hillary Clinton’s new health care plan. Okay, Romney didn’t use the word “exciting.” But he did recognize the vital differences between Clinton’s new plan and the one she proposed to the nation in the early 1990s:

First, under the proposal rolled out last week, if people like the employer-sponsored insurance they have, they can keep it. Fine—but this is not what caught Romney’s attention. It’s the alternatives: “people who don't obtain insurance through their employer are invited to buy a government-run, Medicare-like plan or enroll in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). And so, more Americans will end up in government-run insurance. . . . It's the gentle slope to a single payer, socialized medicine model,” Romney warned.. ”

Quite simply, Clinton has opened the door to the single-payer model—if people want it. The beauty of her plan is that no one is forced into a government plan. Americans will wind up in a Medicare-like plan only if they choose it over a private insurer.

Clinton is not alone. Last spring John Edwards unfurled a proposal that would force private insurers to compete with a public plan that he calls “Medicare-Plus.” Today, in a web-cast sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, he reiterated his goal “to give consumers a choice; they could gravitate in either direction.”

One journalist on the panel was blunt: “Is this a back-door to single payer?" <snip>



http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2007/09/index.html