The Power of Hillary's Health Care Number
The Clinton campaign is using numbers as a weapon against the Obama campaign. Specifically, they're pointing to Hillary Clinton's proposal to cap health insurance premiums at 5 percent to 10 percent of income —a precise, measurable commitment she unveiled in an interview with The New York Times—as an easy contrast with Barack Obama's health and economic proposals, which they call vague and arbitrarily conceived.
"Hillary's provided a very detailed framework of how she would provide health care for every single American," said Neera Tanden, the campaign's policy director. "She has provided more information than Senator Obama, she has made it clear through providing guidelines on the premium caps that she wants to make health care affordable to all Americans and she has given more specificity how she would lower costs for all Americans."
Back in 1992, George Stephanopoulos, then Bill Clinton's deputy campaign manager, said "Specificity is a character issue this year.” Hillary Clinton clearly subscribes to that thinking, especially as she prepares to campaign in Pennsylvania, where she is counting on her base of white working-class voters—who don't seem so enamored with Mr. Obama's sometimes soaring rhetoric—to give her a significant and convincing victory.
In the interview published in today's Times about health care and in an interview published in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about economics, Clinton has been using policy specificity as an answer to questions about her character raised by the Obama campaign, which has said she suffers from a "character gap," and to the media's enthusiastic coverage of her inaccurate portrayal of a trip she made in Bosnia in 1996. She spoke to Bloomberg News last week about her stimulus package and is scheduled to speak to Al Hunt on Bloomberg television today to talk about the economy.
"One of the distinctions between these two campaigns," said deputy communications director Phil Singer, "Is that the Obama campaign is fueled by words and the Clinton campaign is fueled by solutions."
Singer disagreed with the notion that Clinton had been especially specific in the past few days. "She has been talking specifics throughout the course of this campaign," he said.
But the Clinton campaign has certainly intensified its attacks on Obama's lack of specificity of late. Yesterday, they criticized his speech on the economy as unoriginal and vague. And they argue that his proposed measure to reduce insurance premiums by $2,500 for the typical family is not backed up by independent research and seems to be a number pulled out of a hat.
The Obama plan to lower costs does not include a cap on premiums. According to a memo the Obama campaign put out on May 29, 2007, the Obama campaign arrives at the $2,500 figure through premium-suppressing measures such as improved information technology, better disease management, reduced insurance overhead and reinsurance—government-backed protection for small businesses against extraordinary health care costs.
"Under our “best-guess” assumptions, we estimate that businesses will save $140 billion annually in insurance premiums. The typical family will save $2500 per year," the memo said.
- Poll
- Obama (D)
- McCain(R)
- Spread
- RCP Average
- 49.6
- 44.1
- Obama +5.5
- Candidate
- Favorable
- Unfavorable
- Spread
- Obama
- 54.9
- 36.1
- +18.8
- McCain
- 50.7
- 39.6
- +11.1
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Hillary's HealthCare Plan is DOOMED to Fail.
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Her healthcare domestic policy fiasco in 1993 known as “Hillarycare” was ‘shot down’ by a Democratic Congress because of her strident and uncompromising attitude --- History will repeat itself if she is elected.
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What does the much-vaunted "specificity" of Senator Clinton's suggested cap really mean? This cap is a measure that's both too specific and not specific enough.
It's too specific in the sense of being a "one-size-fits-all" measurement that would be highly unfair if applied across the board to everyone who does not qualify for subsidies. Should Citizen A, who is making just barely enough not to qualify for subsidies -- and who perhaps has gone without health insurance for years because she couldn't afford it -- have to pay the same percentage of income as Citizen B, whose income is significantly higher and who has already been paying 10% of his income for premiums without feeling too much pain? Such a policy would not benefit people who are struggling to reach, or remain in, the middle class.
On the other hand, the cap is not specific enough in that a cap based on percentage of income doesn't mean much if "income" isn't defined. Does Senator Clinton mean before-tax or after-tax income? If she's talking about before-tax income, her measurement would not be fair to people in high-tax states like New York.
What's more, a cap based on income alone doesn't take assets into account. Like many people I know, over the past few years I've been forced through unemployment and underemployment to cover health care premiums and other expenses by liquidating assets. Some of us have relied on IRA withdrawals, others on home equity loans, still others on both IRA withdrawals and home equity loans. And people I know without assets have lived on credit cards. So far, I've managed to keep paying my health care premiums, but some people I know have had to drop their health care coverage because their assets were dwindling -- or their debts were mounting -- at a frightening pace. Certainly it would only be fair in a government-sponsored program to consider assets in setting premiums -- otherwise, the program could end up benefiting wealthy people with substantial assets but little or even no income. But at what point should people be required to tap into their assets? Someone who will be collecting a generous pension as well as Social Security within a few years might be able to afford to tap into a $250,000 IRA, but someone who isn't slated to receive a pension and whose Social Security benefit is based on fewer years in the workforce (as is the case with many women) could endanger her financial security if she tapped into an IRA of the same size. Yet asset tests are very difficult to devise and administer -- witness the ongoing controversy over asset tests in the Medicaid program.
I've never been convinced of the wisdom of mandating everyone who doesn't qualify for subsidies to pay for premiums, and Senator Clinton's latest embellishnment of her health care plan hasn't changed my mind.
Here are some more specifics. She already had 8 years in which to accomplish something in health care. She failed. If that is her vaunted experience then it is time to move aside.
Dont you have to have credibility in order to sell numbers to people. Beside I doubt most Americans know what the numbers mean. Hilary's problem is that she is so desperate to show that she knows everything in order to convince people that Obama doesnt know nearly as much as she does she fails to connect with people. People need bread and butter issues but they also need to see that you are a leader with a vision and she has yet to show what overreaching plans she has for the country. What direction she plans on moving the country in. She is too busy showing that she is the smartest kid in the last class meanwhile 80% of Americans think the country is heading on the wrong track.
Carol
There is no way that an unreasonable person will listen to any one even if it's in their best interest. Instead of bashing Clinton for actually having a plan that hopefully will lead us into universal health care, why not ask yourselves what Obama's plan is -- unfeasible, unrealistic, and vague, something he slapped together to present at his dog and pony shows.
So busy hating and in so much denial that Hillary, damn if she does, damn if she doesn't. Hillary haters are like that Spanish expression, Perro que no come no dejar comer. "A dog that doesn't eat doesn't let the others eat."
You don't want universal health care, then shut up and let us have it. In the end you'll benefit from it. You'll be able to "eat at the same table."
It' not Hillary whose desperate here, it's Obamaoids, who have nothing to stand on but "hope," by the way is not a policy and "yes, we can" will not bring the cost of health care down. Just words folks with no substance. "Chúpate esa!"
On the contrary. She nailed this issue without support years ago when no one listened and now that its feasible and people finally want to support this issue then she is by far the better candidate to pull through with it. That's 8 years of work compared to Obama's 0 years and specifics that he can't hold a candle too.
It's pretty simple really. Price caps don't work. They usually wind up creating a shortage of the capped product. So if Hillary wants to make sure that even more Americans are uninsured then fire away with those premium caps girl.
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Observer Featured :
Teamkillers
Max
Stanford
Acomplia
Clayton
Google
Cody
Harvard