Clinton's new plan to provide health care for all Americans differs more from her 1993 proposal known as ``Hillarycare'' than it does from ideas offered by her chief Democratic rivals in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Clinton’s plan would require every American to purchase insurance, either through their jobs or through a program modeled on Medicare or the federal employee health plan. Businesses would be required to offer insurance or contribute to a pool that would expand coverage. Individuals and small businesses would be offered tax credits to make insurance more affordable.
"I believe everyone - every man, woman and child - should have quality, affordable health care in America," Clinton told an audience at a medical center in Iowa, the early voting state where traditionally the nomination process is launched.
Joking that her proposals "won't make me the insurance industry's woman of the year," Clinton said insurers would no longer be able to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions or genetic predisposition to certain illnesses.
The centerpiece of Clinton's plan is the so-called "individual mandate," requiring everyone to have health insurance just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Such a mandate has detractors at both ends of the political spectrum, raising questions about how such a rule would be enforced.
Clinton's proposal, draws on the same four principles that opponents Barack Obama and John Edwards already put on the table: Allowing many Americans the option of paying to join a new government-run plan, requiring insurance companies to accept all applicants and not charge more for those who are ill, giving subsidies to help families afford coverage and raising taxes on upper-income Americans to pay for it all.
Clinton made clear her plan "is not government-run," but a way to extend coverage to an estimated 47 million Americans who now go without. Her declaration was a clear message to Republicans, the insurance industry, businesses and millions of voters who remember the resistance to big-government takeover, a fear that sank Clinton’s attempt at health care reform 13 years ago during her husband Bill's first term. At that time, she headed a task force that produced a 1,342-page plan that failed amid criticism it would have created a new government bureaucracy and would force people off the insurance they had.
Heeding the lessons learned from her last attempt, Clinton said that under her new plan anyone who is content with their health coverage can keep what they have. She insisted no new government bureaucracy would be created even as it seeks to cover tens of millions uninsured.
Clinton’s announcement came under fire from both Democratic and Republican rivals, including party foes who say her plan merely echoes their own. Although rival John Edwards criticized Clinton for being too beholden to health-care interest groups and campaign contributions by their lobbyists to bring about real change, he says Clinton’s plan does look much like his own. ``If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then I'm flattered,'' Edwards said.
Edwards has also offered a plan that includes an individual mandate, while the proposal outlined by Barack Obama does not. Obama has insisted individuals can't be forced to buy insurance until its costs are substantially reduced.
Obama said Clinton's plan is similar to one he proposed in the spring. He criticized the Clinton administration's closed-door sessions on health care in the 1990s, saying "the real key to passing any health care reform is the ability to bring people together in an open, transparent process that builds a broad consensus fo