Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Monday gave the details of her healthcare reform agenda, which focuses on universal insurance and consumer choice.
Announced in Iowa, Clinton's "American Health Choices Plan" emphasizes the availability of both public and private health insurance options. Coverage would be mandatory for the nation's 47 million uninsured residents under the plan, but consumer choice would be a focal point, Clinton indicated.
"It is time for us to come together and start living up to our values, to provide quality affordable healthcare for every single American," Clinton said, according to Reuters.
Perhaps responding to Republican criticism of Democrats' agendas as big-government solutions, Clinton clarified that her plan would not be government-run. "There will be no more bureaucracy," she said. "This plan expands personal choice and increases competition to keep costs down."
Clinton's proposal combines conservative strategies such as tax credits and expanded coverage options with liberal expansions of public programs such as Medicare and the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
While Clinton did not give explicit details of how the reforms would be funded, the plan would rely on contributions from employers who don't offer health insurance to their workers, individual premiums, and an additional $100 billion annually that would come from tax revenues and savings generated by other reforms, said Roger Hickey, co-director of advocacy group The Institute for America's Future.
Hickey noted that Clinton's tax credit offerings would differ from the credits proposed by President Bush, which reward individuals for enrolling in consumer-directed health plans. Clinton would issue tax credits based on income levels for those who cannot afford insurance premiums, he said.
"(The plan) is not as complicated as the original Hillarycare plan of 1993," said Hickey. "It's assuring people that they have choices and it gives people a choice of private sector health insurance or a public plan like Medicare. She's focused on affordability of premiums."
Critics of Clinton's proposal, which include her Democratic and Republican rivals in the presidential race, found fault with her plan, referring to the previous failures of the Clintons' healthcare fixes in the 1990s.
"The mismanagement of the effort in 1993 and 1994 has set back our ability to move toward universal healthcare immeasurably," said Democratic candidate Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.).