When Hillary and healthcare are in the same sentence, some of us tremble. And for good reason: her latest foray into government healthcare planning is scary. And while Hillarycare redux is not healthcare a la Castro, it certainly preserves much of the worst in the status quo while adding more troubles still.
Clinton, for example, wants not only to preserve the distorted tax code that ties healthcare to employment, she wants employers to pay for it — or else. How many marginal businesses – large and small – could such a plan tip into bankruptcy? It’s difficult to say, but it should make us shudder.
Clinton’s plan becomes “universal” in that it requires all individuals to get insurance – including millionaires. It’s the stick over the carrot. And while the Clinton plan borrows the carrot idea (tax credits) from the right, she preserves, nay worsens, the whole regulatory edifice that currently makes insurance so expensive.
In a final stroke of political genius, Clinton decides to keep the private market of insurers around to do the dirty work. Why? Not because she particularly likes private insurers (she proved she didn’t in 1993); but rather because she knows she can harvest campaign contributions from the insurance industry.
(Note: I’m still waiting for Adam Searing to debate me. Come on, Adam, let’s rumble.)
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