Lord help me, I'm a wonk

[teddywolf]

I'm leaning toward hoping Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate due to her health care proposal. Not quite as sweeping a proposal as single-payer, but a damn sight better than what we have.

I'll post more on my general opinions of the candidates when I don't have to prep for work.

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Hillary Clinton's plan, unfortunately, reads a lot like the corporate boondoggle we have here in Massachusetts: that of making it illegal to exist without buying into a corrupt and overpriced insurance system. I would have been bankrupted by such a plan when I was just starting out in the workforce. I was young and healthy and employers either didn't offer health coverage or contributed not one dime to the premiums, and I was making barely above minimum wage. I opted not to get coverage. Mandating that people like my young self get covered is all about hoovering dollars out of peoples' pockets to support the corporate insurers, *or* creating yet another class of individuals dependent on the government for support, possibly reducing them to penury in the process. It is a plan that is weighed on the backs of the working poor, as many plans hatched by wealthy Democrats are.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Actually, you're wrong about it forcing people to buy into the overpriced insurance system.

Hillary Clinton's plan has a couple of points in its favor that the Romney plan does not: capping premiums as a percentage of income, allowing people to buy into the government plan (which is a much less expensive plan, I have to tell you), and a strong education about who is eligible for the government plan. If I had known, during the 90s, that I was eligible for state health care owing to my income status, I would have gotten on it. I had no clue. And if you were earning barely above minimum wage, you would have been eligible too I think.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

At least in MA, there are also very inexpensive plans available for young, healthy workers. And the subsidies vary by income level -- though a single person earning just above minimum wage will pay *something* for health care.