What's past is prologue.
Just as she did in 1993, when she was the point person for the Clinton administration's healthcare reform proposals, Sen. Hillary Clinton again matronizes Americans.
She would have Americans suffer from her long-time arrogance and mistrust of people not employed by government; judging from what she proposes, the federal government knows best.
Last week, she described another part of her plans for taking over Americans' health and medical care.
As before, she continues to confuse and conflate "healthcare" with "health insurance." There is a difference.
Medical care is actually getting your medical problems taken cared for, whether it's a reassuring telephone call with your doctor or heart surgery that resolves your problem.
Mandatory government insurance is quite different from voluntary private insurance. For starters, "government" is an articulation of political decisions; and "insurance" is a promise to be made good in the future. This boils down to "government insurance" = "political promise."
In contrast, voluntary private insurance is voluntary; you don't have to buy it if you don't want to. And, it's private, meaning your application and medical information is less likely to become part of a government database open to curious government bureaucrats and politicians.
An Associated Press Interview reported by Beth Fouhy last Tuesday, says Sen. Clinton said, "that a mandate requiring every American to purchase health insurance was the only way to achieve universal healthcare" but "at this point, we don't have anything punitive that we have proposed." However, Clinton said she could envision a day when "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview — like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination." That sounds pretty punishing to me. No health insurance, no new job.
Some of Clinton's supporters reflect her arrogance. The Official Clinton Web site quotes former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala as saying "No one in public life knows more about healthcare than Senator Clinton." So she claims that Clinton knows more than the medical doctors holding elective or other positions in public life.
I also remember an exchange between then-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas and Paul Starr, one of Hillary's healthcare experts during her 1990s expedition into the healthcare jungle. As I recall the confrontation, Sen. Gramm said he cared more about his own children than Mr. Starr did. Mr. Starr objected, saying something to the effect "You're wrong, Senator. I care more about your children than you do." Sen. Gramm then asked "OK. What are their birthdays?"
Sen. Clinton lies when she talks about "choice." Under her plan, she promises "The same choice of health plan options that members of congress
receive: Americans can keep their existing coverage or access the same menu of quality private insurance options that their Members of Congress receive." But one of the options of federal government employees is to not buy into ANY insurance plan. There is an incentive for government employees to use the government plan: your tax dollars pay for most of the premiums.
Hillary doesn't want me to have the choice to not have insurance, even though I've been quite happily living without health insurance for over a decade now.
She also equates "quality" with good insurance benefits, not the results of your medical treatment. She doesn't mention that Americans have longer survival times and lower annual death rate from cancer, on average, than Europeans, according to several reports.
She apparently thinks "primary care docs can be spread around like so much peanut butter, thin enough so that we cover everyone in the world. It doesn't matter that we're burning out or that we're frustrated with providing inferior care" under government-managed systems as my friend, Robert L. Morgan, MD, puts it. Dr. Morgan now deals directly with patients, rather than limit his practice with private or government insurance restrictions.
Hillary doesn't mention how frivolous lawsuits brought by trial lawyers increase costs.
And, I don't have space, time or patience to describe how her proposals would expand Medicaid, bankrupt health insurance companies, or how she might try to force illegal immigrants to buy insurance.
She has at least learned to leave out a lot of the details; she gallantly would leave that up to Congress to iron out.
This is faint praise, but it's all that's deserved.
Editor's Note: Robert J. Cihak wrote this week's column.
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Robert J. Cihak, M.D., is a senior fellow and board member of the Discovery Institute and a past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., comments on medical-legal issues and is a visiting fellow in economics and citizenship at the International Trade Education Foundation of the Washington International Trade Council.
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