HillaryCare Version 2.0

Senator Clinton is unveiling her newest healthcare reform plan today. The cornerstone of her plan (and John Edwards' also) is that everyone will be required to have health insurance.

The AP report makes it sound like this requirement will be just like most state requirements that drivers have auto insurance; in other words, "No big deal." However, there's no details yet on whether Clinton plans to criminalize failure to purchase health insurance in similar manner to auto insurance.

As is standard procedure for Democrats funding anything these days, they say they'll manage by undoing President Bush's tax cuts.

Clinton makes some other questionable claims about her plan. She plans to force insurance companies to accept all comers, regardless of pre-existing conditions. She somehow claims that things will not change for people who already have health insurance, apparently not seeing a connection between the costs of health insurance to consumers and companies' selection criteria.

Clinton says Medicare and the federal employees' health insurance program will be expanded to cover people who cannot get "adequate" coverage through their employers. That part of the plan contains this whopper:

Consumers could choose between either government-run program, but aides stress that no new federal bureaucracy would be created under the Clinton plan.

Sources on the Hill report that Clinton also lives in a magical fantasy-land.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 12:06 PM

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