Hillary Clinton: The American Health Choices Plan

The title of Hillary’s plan and the graphic above copied from the graphic on Hillary’s website points out her emphasis on expanding health insurance choices. The choices are to keep your existing coverage through your employer or your own individual coverage, choose from the same private health care options that members of congress have as part of the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program, or choose a quality public plan option similar to Medicare. The plan calls for the federal government to become a provider of health insurance. The idea is that the competition will encourage the private insurers to offer better plans at a lower cost. Personally I believe that the government needs to stay out of the business of health insurance. It’s another bureaucracy. Competition is healthy but I think it needs to be between the private insurers. Possibly the insurance companies aren’t willing to compete. If that’s true, it sounds like price fixing is occurring which is against the law.

The second part of the plan calls for lower premiums and increased security. Lower premiums will be realized by removing hidden taxes, better lifestyle choices, and focusing on efficiency and modernization in our present health care system. Increased security will be legislated by ensuring that job loss or family illnesses wouldn’t lead to a loss of coverage or high costs and an end to unfair health insurance discrimination “by creating a level-playing field of insurance rules across states and markets, the plan ensures that no American is denied coverage, refused renewal, unfairly priced out of the market, or forced to pay excessive insurance company premiums.” This part of the plan is common across all the plans. There’s little or nothing that could be argued about here. What interests me the most is unfair discrimination. As far as I’m concerned, unfair discrimination is redundant. Discrimination is unfair and it’s against the law everyplace but in insurance. We’ve tolerated it from our insurance companies long enough.

The third part of the plan, promote shared responsibility, is the main emphasis of Edward’s plan. The participants in Hillary’s plan are insurance and drug companies, individuals, providers, employers, and the federal government. Insurance companies will be required to end discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, drug companies will offer medications at fair prices, individuals will be required to purchase health insurance, providers will work with patients and businesses to deliver high quality, affordable care (no more $20.00 aspirins), and employers will help finance the system. Large employers will provide health insurance or contribute to the cost of coverage. Small businesses will receive a tax credit to continue or begin to offer coverage. The federal government will ensure that health insurance is affordable and never a burden on any family. I agree that shared responsibility should be a cornerstone but I’m not sure that employers should continue to be the first line of defense. Think of the cost savings to companies who don’t have to pay for administrating an insurance plan. What if they paid their employees the amount the employer paid into the plan and allow the employee to purchase their own insurance. Employers don’t assist with house or car insurance so why do they need to offer health insurance. I think it’s been a bad practice that we need to end.

The last two parts of the plan are to ensure affordable health coverage for all and institute a fiscally responsible plan that honors our priorities. Affordable health coverage will be realized by providing tax relief to ensure affordability, limit premium payments to a percentage of income, create a new small business tax credit, strengthen Medicaid and CHIP, and launch a new tax credit for qualifying private and public retiree health plans to offset a significant portion of catastrophic expenditures. A fiscally responsible plan that honors our priorities comes from modernizing the heath systems and reducing wasteful health spending, a new tax credit to make premiums affordable, and making the employer tax exclusion for health care fairer.

The plan has a lot of positive points but again the plan calls for too much bureaucracy. There isn’t any reason the government can’t be a watch dog ensuring that everyone plays fair and providing tax credits where necessary.