I admit I was taken by surprise when Hillary Clinton announced a plan for healthcare reform earlier this week. Variously called (with some implied derision) Clinton Healthcare 2.0, Hillary Plan 2.o, or worst, Hillarycare, this new proposal is a scaled-back version of the plan she and her husband proposed in 1993. It calls for an increased government presence in the healthcare market, but includes a significant role for private insurance companies. Most controversially, it requires all citizens to carry health insurance, whether private or government provided.
As of yet I have not reviewed the plan in detail, but I wanted to make at least one timely comment. Ms. Clinton will, as she was in 1993, be taken to the woodshed over every detail in her new plan. The abuse will come, almost exclusively, from loudmouths who have no health care reform program of their own. These complainers will come from two groups: the Ostriches who think U.S. healthcare is perfect as it is, and the Cloistered Privileged who believe we are only one or two tax credits away from health nirvana.
It is not a foregone conclusion that I will vote for Clinton given the opportunity. However, she earned my respect in 1993 and earns it all over again with her new proposal. In the 14 years since the Clintons put forward their original healthcare reform plan, only one other serious politician has proposed an equally comprehensive plan, and that is John Edwards. That alone shows how much political courage it takes to attempt healthcare reform in this country.
And she didn't have to stick her neck out again this time. She is ahead in all the polls; there was no need for her to take this political risk. That she did tells me that she is serious about getting reform legislation through if elected president, and that is encouraging.
While Clinton proposes real reform, the Bush people are in a fistfight right now to block improvements to the State Children's Health Insurance Plan, or SCHIP, an extension of Medicaid that provides health coverage to children whose parents make too much money to qualify for regular Medicaid. SCHIP covers 4 million children, and the stubborn White House is threatening to veto any enhancement to the plan that would allow it to cover more kids. In fact, the Bushies want to cover fewer kids, not more. A presidential administration that won't come to an agreement with Congress over a program that covers less than 2% of Americans is clearly incapable of addressing the interests of the other 98%. (Hey, I have an idea -- let's impeach him!)
In school, I was educated under the Baconian ideal (or Jeffersonian, if you please) that the path to healthy debate is to put all ideas, no matter how silly, on the table and then sort through them, synthesizing and winnowing until a useful solution emerges. Deriding serious ideas like this one, especially when there are no other politicians proposing anything else, is a clear violation of this spirit of free debate.
Let the woman talk. Let her opponents present their own plans. But the one unacceptable outcome is the one we endured in 1993 -- to shoot down the only idea out there, and then do absolutely nothing.
The original version of this article stated that Hillary Clinton is the only major politician to put forth a health reform proposal since 1993. I amended this when I discovered that John Edwards has his own plan. I apologize, especially to the Edwards campaign, for the error.