Well, we knew it was gonna happen... Hillary has proposed reforming health care, again. But, this time, she promises it's not government-run.
And I have some oceanfront property to sell. In Nebraska.
Peter Ferrara explains:
Hillary Clinton’s plan starts out very simply: she will mandate under federal law that everyone in America must buy health insurance, and by this she supposedly achieves universal coverage. The catch, of course, is that once you start down the road with this mandate, you end up with government-run health care.And voila! Socialized medicine for the 21st century.
If you are going to require people to buy health insurance, then the next question which follows is, exactly what do they have to buy to fulfill this requirement? Suppose they buy the Fraternity Plan that pays only for unlimited beer and pizza during the weekends? Have they satisfied the requirement?
The serious point is if you are going to require people to buy health insurance, then you are going to have to specify exactly what health-plan people will have to buy to satisfy this requirement. So the government has gone from telling you that you need health insurance, to telling you what kind of health-insurance coverage or plan you must have. And with Hillary, we can assume that this will be no basic, minimum plan. But Hillary continues to insist that this is not government-run health care.
And this, of course, is only the beginning. Special interests will swarm to get their favored coverage in the required plan. People will merrily get used to billing everything in the plan to the insurance company. And costs will rise.
People will start complaining that they can’t afford paying for this costly coverage, and whining that the government must do something. The government itself will already be paying for a lot of this coverage, and budgets will therefore explode.
So the government will do something to control costs. It will start rationing. It will start telling people what services and treatments they can have, and when. It will start delaying access to new innovations. It will squeeze payments to health care providers so much that the providers will start rationing what they provide. Government guidelines will start dictating to these providers that they ration care, and how to do it. After a while, people start to realize, “hey, we have government run health care.”
The problem is, Hillary introduced it too soon. Perhaps she feels the need to get the coverage off General Petraeus, perhaps there are other considerations, but with well over a year to pick apart this plan, the chances of it seeing the light of day are about the same as a snowball's in... well, you know.
Added @5:38 PM: Dan McLaughlin at RedState says of HillaryCare
She said she could envision a day when "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview — like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination," but said such details would be worked out through negotiations with Congress.
Proof of health insurance, yes. Proof of citizenship, no; that would be unfair and mean-spirited. Also, it's racist to require proof of citizenship and eligibility to vote.
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