Truth be told, it's Clinton who is lying when she says she has a plan for Universal Health Care.

[calteacherguy]

She has no plan on how to enforce her mandates. Obama's plan provides coverage for all by lowering costs, without a mandate.

Clinton doesn't trust the American people to make wise choices.

[liberalnurse]

1. This group knows the difference. They know health care!.

This group supports Hillary's Plan!

[calteacherguy]

2. I'll make up my own mind what and who I support. nt

[K Gardner]

3. Not all nurses support Hillary's "Plan"...

It is very misleading to say they do, or try to speak for an entire, diverse group of people. If that isn't what you were doing, I apologize. But that's what it sounds like.

[cuke]

7. No one said all nurses support Hillary's plan

And as a group, which is what was actually said, nurses DO support Hillary's plan

[K Gardner]

11. No, I'm sorry, that is just not true.

You could try to ask any of the 2,000 union nurses I just conferenced with in California and you wouldn't find a supporter of "Hillary's" plan among any of them. Again, please do not generalize for entire groups of people.

[cuke]

15. Yes, it's true

and I've heard the "I don't know anyone who supports Clinton" too many times to believe it.

[liberalnurse]

14. This group does!

Ohio does................I'm one of them. The Ohio Nurse Democratic Caucus does too.........unofficially at the moment but we all love Hillary...always have.

[RaleighNCDUer]

30. And I'll bet that not a one of them is currently without health insurance.

The problem with mandated insurance is the 45 million people who do not have insurance because they CANNOT AFFORD IT.

Mandated private insurance has to be paid for by somebody.

Employers are already going bust trying to cover the people they have - and have been stripping people out of FT jobs and making them PT or contractors for the last decade, because they can't afford the premiums.

Employees can't afford it - if they could, they'd already have insurance.

The unemployed can't afford it. They might be able to get on government programs - medicaid - but healthcare facilities are already having trouble with (meaning, refusing) medicaid because the government can't keep up with the rising costs engendered by the for-profit medical and insurance industries.

If you were honest about it, you would acknowledge this.

[Sparkly]

4. I just read Krugman's Op-Ed. Do you have a response to that?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/opinion/30krugman.html

I see you're posting about Clinton vs. Obama's healthcare plans quite a bit. I hadn't understood all the importance of the mandate until I read this. Has Obama's campaign made an official response of any sort? If not, what would your response be?

[cuke]

8. No, he doesnt. Thats why he started this thread

In order to avoid answering about it in another thread he started

[ClarkUSA]

9. Krugman is a Clinton supporter.

And his column is more rancid opinion than fact.

See this thread:http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3776841&mesg_id=3776841

[cuke]

10. Another untruth from a Hillary Hater

Krugman hasn't endorsed anyone to my knowledge.

And you haven't been able to refute anything Krugman has said. You're just attacking Krugman because you cant defend Obama's lies and use of rightwing memes

[Sparkly]

13. Which facts were wrong?

I'm being serious here. If he got any facts wrong, I'd like to know.

[cuke]

17. If you look at the link he provided, you'll see Krugman made no mistakes

and the poster you're responding to was unable to identify any mistakes

[Mass]

19. Krugman forgets one thing. In the rest of the world, when there is a mandate, there is also

single-payer insurance, which both reduces the cost of insuring and makes sure that people who are sick do not pay more than people who are healthy.

Neither Obama nor Clinton's plans are adequate because they all depend on private insurances that will make sure that you get the least possible within the limits of the law, except if you are rich and can pay individually.

Which is worse is that we already have the socialized medicine that people are so afraid of. It is called HMO and with them, you are a lot less free to choose your doctor than you would be in European countries.

[cuke]

26. Single payer also includes a mandate

to buy insurance from the govt and to pay income taxes to pay for it.

[MercutioATC]

5. I've always advocated expanding FEHBP.

It's the most effective way of getting health insurance (and health care) to everybody.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[hedgehog]

20. I think this is the third time I've seen you post this. I still think you're

straining at gnats here, not to mention tha the links have gone bad!

[cuke]

23. I don't care what you think

and if you click the first link (the one that links to a thread on DU) you will find the correct links

[ClarkUSA]

12. Fact Check: Why Obama's Health Insurance Plan Covers More People More Rapidly Than Clinton's

As we get closer to the Iowa Caucuses, the first casualty of an increasingly competitive campaign has become the facts about each candidate's health care plan.

Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton took the unusual step of flying from South Carolina to Iowa with the specific purpose of launching her most pointed attack at Senator Obama to date. At her event, she said her plan covered every American and that Obama's universal plan "flunked the truth in labeling test." You don't have to dig too deep into the numbers to see that:

1) Despite her repeated claims, Senator Clinton's plan does not cover every American, in fact it leaves 15-20 million Americans without health insurance

2) Her claim that Obama's plan leaves out 15 million Americans is highly misleading.

3) The Obama plan would cover more people more quickly than the Clinton plan.


READ THE REST OF THE MEMO BELOW


I. Both Obama And Clinton Have Serious Plans For Achieving Universal Health Insurance, But They Are Based On Different Diagnoses Of The Problem

Senator Obama's plan is based on the premise that Americans desperately want health insurance, but can't afford it. In his view, universal coverage cannot be achieved unless we make insurance affordable and enrollment as close to automatic as possible, and so he believes that the focus of the reform effort must be on affordability and accessibility.

Obama has allocated sufficient resources in his plan to cover 100 percent of the population and has said that if we implement his plan and find that there is a tiny percent of Americans who still lack insurance, he will figure out why they are falling through the cracks and get them covered.

Senator Clinton has implied that by including a mandate she will automatically get to universal coverage. Experts agree that this is not true. Indeed, Senator Clinton herself acknowledged this fact when she gave a speech in 1994 criticizing the same individual mandate she now supports:

'The only examples we have of individual mandates are those like auto insurance requirements in many states where, in spite of the fact that the state has access to all drivers through the licensing process, literally thousands and even hundreds of thousands of drivers remain uninsured in states with such an individual mandate.'

It would be extremely unfair to enact a mandate before we make health care affordable—which could take several years. And even once a mandate is in place, the evidence suggests that millions of Americans would need to be exempted and that millions more would not comply.


II. The Evidence Suggests That the Clinton Plan Will Leave 15 to 20 million People Without Health Insurance.

Senator Clinton has repeatedly refused to say how she will enforce her mandate. Even if we assume that she will ultimately propose some substantial penalty for people who do not buy health insurance, the experience from auto insurance and in Massachusetts—the only state that has ever enacted a health insurance mandate—suggests that she will fall far short of universal coverage.

First, Massachusetts has exempted almost 20 percent of the uninsured from the mandate because at today's prices, health insurance is simply too expensive even with the large subsidies provided. Any national mandate would need to do the same.

Second, Massachusetts is not going to achieve 100 percent compliance even among those required to purchase health insurance--and that's in a program with a clear enforcement mechanism. The director of the Massachusetts plan said this quite clearly in a recent New York Times article. While it is difficult to estimate precisely how far short of 100 percent Massachusetts will fall, particularly because we are in only the first year of implementation, the numbers so far suggest that between 30 and 40 percent of the uninsured have complied with the mandate.

Further, the majority of those were people who were automatically enrolled by the state. Among those who needed to take action to enroll, the number is much lower. Even if Massachusetts does better and ends up with only 10 to 20 percent who refuse to comply, those numbers would translate to another 5 to 10 million people uncovered nationwide.

This number of people without health insurance is completely consistent with the evidence from the one kind of insurance where mandates are common – automobile insurance. Although 47 states mandate that everyone have insurance, almost 15 percent of drivers do not.

The bottom line is that the Clinton approach is likely to leave somewhere between 15 and 20 million people uninsured, even with a stronger enforcement mechanism than she currently seems comfortable with.


III. Clinton's Misleading Attack on Obama's Plan

Hillary Clinton repeatedly says that Obama's plan leaves out 15 million people. This estimate does not take into account several features of the Obama plan including his program to immediately cover of all children and his program to actually get coverage for young adults 18-25 (who are the least insured and most likely to disregard a mandate).

Senator Clinton also leaves out the fact that the number includes around 7 million undocumented immigrants who are not covered by her plan either.

The reality is that Obama's plan will cover every American because it cuts costs aggressively, makes enrollment virtually automatic, and because he has allocated sufficient resources to ensure that if after implementation there are some Americans who still don't have health care, he can find a way to get them covered


IV. The Obama Plan Will Cover More People Than The Clinton Plan Will, And Will Do So More Quickly

The main reason that people are uninsured in America today is that they cannot afford health insurance. The Obama plan does more to control costs than the Clinton plan does, and it will cover more people, because:

The Obama plan makes much more significant up front investments in information technology than Senator Clinton's plan does;
the Obama plan provides real reinsurance to alleviate the cost of catastrophic illnesses for all employers and employees, a feature the Clinton plan lacks;
The Obama plan would increase the coverage among young adults by allowing them remain on their parents' insurance up to age 25 regardless of educational status.
The Obama plan would mandate health care coverage for children with a specific enforcement mechanism.
IV. We Cannot Afford To Fail

All of the leading Democrats have put forth serious proposals for achieving universal health insurance. But we have to get the job done. Failure to pass a plan, no matter how well designed on paper, will leave all 47 million uninsured Americans still uninsured. The key question is which person and which plan has the best chance of bringing the country together to actually get the job done. Passing major health care reform requires a president who can bring people together, take on the special interests, and do it in an open and transparent way. On all these measures, Barack Obama's record is unrivaled in this campaign.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The truth is that neither the Obama plan, nor the Clinton plan, guarantees 'universal coverage' for all Americans, although they both aspire to this goal. Let's look at the Clinton plan first. MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber, one of Clinton's health care advisers, describes her plan as a 'universal coverage' plan, in contrast to the Obama plan, which he terms a 'universal access' plan. But he also acknowledges that the Clinton plan will not include everybody. 'Any system that does not have a single payer will not have 100 per cent coverage,' he told me, when I reached him after the Las Vegas debate. 'But you can come very close.' ... The system proposed by Clinton is more analagous to the government-subsidized private insurance system in the Netherlands, where roughly one and a half per cent of the population is estimated to fall through the cracks.'

'Robert Blendon, director of the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy, estimates Obama's plan would end up covering 5 percent to 10 percent fewer individuals than Clinton's. But that's assuming that it's possible for Clinton to require everyone to purchase insurance. Blendon suspects that it isn't. 'At the end of the day,' he tells FactCheck.org, 'it's not going to be everybody. We have no idea what the actual falloff would be.' ... Preliminary data from Massachusetts, which implemented a sweeping health insurance plan last year, is showing that many people would rather remain uninsured than purchase a stripped-down plan. 'People always say having some insurance is better than no insurance,' Blendon says. 'It turns out, in some of the focus groups in Massachusetts, people don't believe that.''

John Holohan, the author of a study conducted at the Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank, that gamed out various different models for health care reform in Massachusetts several years ago, does not believe that either the Clinton or the Obama plan will eliminate the problem of the uninsured altogether. 'We would all be very happy if we got down to one and a half per cent,' he said.

Speech to the Group Health Association of America, February 15, 1994.

Dembner, Alice, "Health Plan May Exempt 20% of the Uninsured"

"There's good evidence," Mr. Kingsdale said, "whether it's buying auto insurance or wearing seat belts or motorcycle helmets, that mandates don't work 100 percent."

The state reports that 200,000+ additional people have acquired health insurance in Massachusetts in the last year. http://www.mahealthconnector.org. There are several different estimates of the number of uninsured individuals in Massachusetts in 2006 (prior to implementation of the mandate. The most commonly used estimate comes from researchers from the Urban Institute who concluded that the number of uninsured was around 500,000. The Census Bureau says there are 650,000 uninsured in Massachusetts. A different team of Urban Institute researchers estimated a number that was roughly 15 percent higher than the Census Bureau number.

Insurance Research Council, 6/28/06

http://www.barackobama.com/factcheck/2007/11/30/post_2.php

[cuke]

18. Fact Check: Even Obama admits that his plan is not universal

During this presidential campaign, Sen. Obama has had a variety of explanations for why his health care plan leaves 15 million people uninsured. Here's a sample —

Sen. Obama claimed his health care plan 'guarantees coverage for every American':


"Today I want to lay out the details of that plan - a plan that not only guarantees coverage for every American, but also brings down the cost of health care." (Sen. Obama Remarks, 5/29/07)

http://www.barackobama.com/2007/05/29/cutting_costs_and...


THEN Sen. Obama admitted his health care plan would not provide coverage for every American:


"During his speech, Obama said, 'I will sign a universal health care plan into law by the end of my first term in office.' But after his speech today, Obama told me his plan really isn't 'universal.' He said it's 'virtually universal.'" (MSNBC's First Read, 5/29/07)

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/05/29/20691...


THEN his spokesman said Sen. Obama believed the decision to require coverage should be left to the states:


"An Obama spokesman, Bill Burton, said that the senator now believes that the issue of mandates should be left to the states to decide, while the federal government focuses on bringing down healthcare costs for everyone. 'As he looked into healthcare, he saw that a mandate was not the answer,' Burton said. 'Good things are happening in the states. The federal government should not stunt what's going on with the states.'" (ABC's Political Radar, 5/31/07)

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/05/obama_h...


THEN Sen. Obama's advisors said they considered mandates; decided it was too ambitious and unpopular with middle class voters:


"Like so many in the Democratic Party, Obama's advisers remember all too well how excessive ambition killed the Clinton plan politically. They don't want to make that mistake again. They fear a mandate sounds scarier to the public, particularly middle-class voters." (The New Republic, 6/3/07)

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/01/opinion/main2...


THEN Sen. Obama said his plan provides health care for everyone:


"Well, let's talk about health care right now because the fact of the matter is -- the fact of the matter is that I do provide universal health care." (CNN, 11/15/07)

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0711/15/se.02.ht...



THEN Sen. Obama admitted his plan does not cover everyone, said he would be 'happy to consider a mandate' later:


"Now, the argument they’ll make is there’s going to be maybe a handful of people who even if it’s affordable still won’t buy it. And my attitude is, you know what, I’m happy to consider a mandate once we get to affordability." (New Hampshire Public Radio, 11/21/07)


THEN Sen. Obama said he'll figure out how to cover everyone later:


"If we see there are people who are still not covered when we make it affordable, then we will figure out how to make sure that everybody's got coverage. Period." (Des Moines Register, 11/25/07)

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=...

[hedgehog]

22. Ah, c'mon, posting the same post again in the same thread?

[cuke]

24. Why dont you answer the question instead of whining about me asking it

An answer will shut me up, but no one can explain how Obama's plan can be both "universal" and "not universal"

[ClarkUSA]

25. It's the same post where Obama says nothing of the sort -- it's all spin with cuke

Where's the fly swatter? ;-)

[cuke]

27. It's all quotes, with links

you're just annoyed because you can't refute it.

[K Gardner]

16. No plan for endorsing mandates does not = "lying". Disingenuous post title.

Which harms, overall, the entire Democratic party and ALL our candidates.

[Catherine Vincent]

21. Why did you start a new thread?

You just have to get your quota in eh?

[illinoisprogressive]

28. Clinton's mandate will only give more fodder for the right to use.

it's so authoritarian and they will have a field day.

[madrchsod]

29. neither of their plans are worth a crap

dennis has the only sound program but it will never be implemented

[Tejanocrat]

31. Dude, I can't STAND Hillary (I'll vote for the nominee, of course), but every time I read your posts

I want to defend Hillary.

And, you make me sympathize with Obama less.

I'm just saying ...

[SaveElmer]

32. Don't worry..he'll switch candidates soon enough...

He flops around like a fish out of water...

[opihimoimoi]

33. WTF??? Another anti Hill post? This is getting OLD...get a life dude....

[LWolf]

34. Neither Clinton nor Obama have a plan for universal health care.

They have plans for universal private, corporate, health insurance.

Let's be clear about that.

Only one candidate has a plan for universal health CARE.