Joe Conason: "Dominant Hillary Scares Enemies"

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Joe Conason: "Dominant Hillary Scares Enemies"

Dominant Hillary Scares Enemies
by Joe Conason
Published: September 18, 2007

Hillary Clinton’s skillful introduction of her new health care plan demonstrated why she is the most formidable Democrat running for president. It also suggested that if victorious, she will not be defeated so easily by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries as she and her husband were the last time they tried to reform the dysfunctional American medical system.

While her major rivals in both the Democratic and Republican presidential fields felt compelled to attack even before she finished speaking, their glancing blows proved only that she is now dominating the campaign.

In broad outline, what Mrs. Clinton is proposing closely resembles the ideas previously presented by John Edwards and Barack Obama. While Mr. Edwards wants a stronger role for government-backed care and Mr. Obama rejects the federal mandate for individual and family insurance, none of these plans differs enough to mobilize primary voters for or against any of the leading candidates. All of the plans would impose stringent regulation on the insurance companies; all would subsidize insurance for working-class and middle-income people; and all would finance the costs of universal coverage by repealing tax cuts for the highest brackets.

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After all, she has adopted an important proposal from the Heritage Foundation as a central part of her own plan.

That’s right: One of the pillars of the new Clinton plan is actually a scheme that was originally fashioned by a prominent policy analyst at Washington’s largest conservative think tank. Back during the debate over health care in the Clinton administration, Heritage’s vice president, Stuart Butler, suggested that Americans be permitted to purchase insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program—the cafeteria plan that covers millions of government employees, from janitors to senators.

Later events showed that Mr. Butler was one of very few conservatives who truly shared that goal. But aside from his idea’s beguiling simplicity, it could be formulated as a question that has only one plausible answer.

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Yet by folding the Heritage proposal into her own new plan—and by simultaneously adopting aspects of the Massachusetts and California universal-coverage plans—Mrs. Clinton is shielding herself against the inevitable barrage from both partisan and corporate adversaries. How radical is a plan that echoes the Heritage Foundation, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mitt Romney?

Of course, Mr. Romney is running away from the health care innovations he helped bring to the Bay State, just as he no longer remembers when he was an advocate of gay rights and reproductive freedom. Like Rudolph Giuliani, he seized upon Mrs. Clinton’s health initiative to warn once more against federal bureaucracy, socialized medicine, big government and all the other scary things supposedly symbolized by “Hillarycare.”

Such frightening phrases have repeatedly terrified American voters into submission to the insurance industry, but they may have lost much of their power. Corporate advertising and Republican rhetoric rolled over Mrs. Clinton in 1994, but she has come back to fight again for this Democratic promise with greater wisdom and experience.

Voters are likely to respect and appreciate her perseverance, and they are also likely to regard her plan with open minds, regardless of the negative propaganda that will no doubt engulf us all. Ever since Harry S. Truman first proposed universal health care in 1948, the insurance industry has refused to create a system that would cover everyone, erecting instead a nightmarish edifice of corporate bureaucracy, unaffordable waste and cruel exclusion.

Rather than rant against the constructive alternatives, let them—and their political mouthpieces—explain why we should continue to tolerate their failure.

http://www.observer.com/2007/dominant-hillary-scares-enemies