It's worse. They don't admit that these plans as I understand them provide for subsidization so the argument is false on its face. But that's rather the point. They can't win on a straight up and down comparison of what the plans actually say.

All bunk if the plan isn't passable in congress.

Never forget that there have been great health-care (some "Universal") plans proposed over the last 38 years, but none have been passed due to a lack of political will and bipartisanship from from both sides.  

I guarantee you that Hillary will have a problem getting this passed as it is. Simply won't pass. A blue-ribbon panel with unimpeachable economists and health-care experts from both sides of the aisle will need to come together and publicly put a plan together, that we can all agree with. I doubt a mandate will be agreed to by both sides unless the democrats have an OVERWHELMING majority in congress.  This is where Obama's advantages and ability to get everyone together comes in.

"Until we get a single payer not-for-profit universal health care system, the kind that Hillary abhors, we will not control medical costs and rationing will continue. This system, which feeds the corporations, is part of the Republican Lite version of the Democratic party Hillary and Bill are attempting to bring back."

The problem with the health care system is the cost which shuts people out and rations care.

The cost is so high because we have a private system that is inefficient. And it's inefficient because we support a parasitical insurance industry through our health care payments. Every other advanced industrialized country in the world does it a different way.

That way is single-payer health care. Eliminating costs by eliminating profits from the middle man.

Any attempt to graft universal coverage over the top of our present broken system will only dramatically increase costs and would be unsustainable.

Naturally, this is a political loser for everybody. Obama's coverage is NOT universal. Hillary's isn't really universal either. But, frankly universal health care will be WILDLY UNPOPULAR if it is put into place by mandates because you are forcing millions of people (the young and healthy) who don't currently pay for health care to purchase it.

Why? Because unless you eliminate runaway cost from the system, by getting the insurance industry out of it, you're forcing people to pay more for health care coverage, to cover the older and sicker.

Maybe that's sensible, even necessary, but it they won't like it. At all. And those are only the tip of the iceberg flaws with the way both plans are proposed.

I remember back in 1993 Bill Clinton talking up his health-care proposal at the time. He asked the audience what percentage of them liked their HMOs. He looked absolutely shocked that so many people HATED managed care (for reasons that everybody understands now).

Democrats need to avoid being chained to an albatross of "universal health care" that is neither universal, nor solves the problem of run-away cost, and is wildly unpopular to boot.

If we get caught in the trap of "doing what's possible" even though it won't work, we'll be crushed by the Republicans for years afterwards. The first failed attempt to introduce health care reform helped bring down the Democratic congress in 1993. We can't afford another mistake like that!

Hillary has said repeatedly that she would support and sign a single payer bill if it passed Congress, she favors single payer. It is deception to say "she abhors" single payer, that's obviously untrue. Even the Congressional sponsors of HR 676, the Conyers/Kucinich single payer bill, insist we must build the political will and movement to get single payer in the US, now far too many Americans no longer trust government to administer a single payer program, only 35% favored single payer in the last major poll, while over 50% favored the hybrid plans, like the Clinton plan, that preserves their choice to keep what they have now if they like it. 80% of Americans are report being relatively content with their current health insurance, many because they have never needed to use it for a major, or chronic illness, and put it to the test to see whether it really meets their needs.

If you are making under 10,000 a year you will be eligible for 100% subsidized insurance, plain and simple. In Massachusetts, where mandates are in effect, over 60,000 people have been granted waivers to not buy insurance because there is no affordable plan available to them, no one is forced to buy what they cannot afford. All families will only have to pay a small percentage of their annual income toward health insurance, the amount is capped in Clinton's plan.

Obama's health care plan is significantly less courageous than Clinton's, and it doesn't make sense. If you do not require a mandate for everyone to have health insurance, but require the insurance companies to grant policies to everyone who asks for them, people will be able to buy policies AFTER they get sick - this is like buying home owner insurance after your house is already burning. The insurance companies will never agree to such a program, and there is no way to make it economically sustainable, even if we had single payer national health insurance available. Health insurance will only work if it requires "everybody in, nobody out."

I want to point out strongly that among low income people  who are eligible for Medicaid and other free public health insurance programs offered in the states, out of 100% of those eligible, only approximately 47% will sign up. This is true across the US. So there are many reasons that people do not sign up for health insurance outside of "they cannot afford it" as Obama claims. In Massachusetts, where there is now a mandate in effect, 92% of those eligible for free health insurance sign up. That is a huge improvement. Now a tremendous number of low income people have free health insurance who did not have it before, including preventive care. It is really a mandate on government to provide health insurance to the poor. Obama's plan betrays low income people.

The contradictions and obvious lack of teeth in Obama's health care plan, along with his nasty attacks on the far more progressive Clinton plan cause me to severely distrust his integrity and grasp of adequate solutions to this life and death issue. Along with his absurd claims that he will have his health plan adopted within the first year of his administration. Everyone in healh care understands how ridiculous that claim is. There is no way for his proposals to work, they are just so much verbiage. Worse, he adopts right wing talking points to destroy the dream of universal health care.

I am a single payer advocate, and single payer uses progressive taxation to include everyone in the financing mechanism to provide health care for all. It is a mandate, simply in other words, using taxes to pay instead of premiums (with subsidies for the poor). Single payer would be far more efficient, however. We need a grassroots movement to press for single payer, the only economically sustainable way to provide adequate health care access to everyone.

Well health care can't be the only measure of that. For example, HRC supports draconian criminal justice and immigration policies.

Krugman has done everything but call Obama Karl Rove ... oh wait, I forgot, MyDD just did that.

This is Krugman's fifth or six article about their healthcare plans. He's ended the last two stating that under an Obama presidency, healthcare will never happen. The real difference between the plans is miniscule. Mandates are a sideshow, especially because Hillary hasn't explained how she'll enforce them. Krugman's analysis depends on the assumption that Hillary's plan equals full coverage for everyone and Obama's means twenty five million people not covered. This isn't an argument being run in reality, it's being run in a fantasy land where Democrats are the only people who exist and the rest of the country won't have a say in healthcare.

In my personal opinion, and I don't claim it's anything more than that, Obama's plan is much more passable and that makes it a better plan. I do not claim that the Republicans will not slander Obama's healthcare, but that doesn't mean you need to make things easy for them. Hillary has failed to respond to the garnishing wages charge, in fact she basically confirmed it. Now to you and I, passionate democrats, that's not a big deal, but it's really a horrible thing to say for the general election. It's a tailor made campaign, and frankly, I don't have confidence in either of their plans to actually reduce healthcare costs fast enough to make a mandate reasonable. We absolutely can't get national healthcare off on the wrong foot, and people terrified that they're going to lose all their money by being forced to get healthcare they can't afford is exactly the wrong foot.

Obama's plan is well set up to survive a Harry and Louise attack for the same reasons everyone here is crapping on it. He's saying "I'm not going to do anything to you if you like your healthcare. I'm not going to force you to do anything." Now we all now that in the long term that's not realistic, but in the short term, it's absolutely the only way we're gonna get people behind healthcare. It's just like Congress. You ask people about congress and they say it sucks. You ask them about their congressman and they say s/he's great. People hate healthcare, but not their healthcare. At least that's true of a lot of middle class people who get their healthcare through their work and are sympathetic to poorer people who can't get coverage but don't actually want anything to happen to them.

Single payer is universal but that is besides the point.

It would appear that Hillary was taught her lesson by the medical insurance industry in the early 90s and now is ready and willing to conform her medical plan proposals to fit their needs. Obama's plan is not much different, only he is asking just how can you force people just barely making a living, who now lack medical insurance, to purchase it when food and rent wipes out most of their income.

Do you understand it?

And if there is a Medicare like option in Hillary's plan, a government run plan that is cheaper, then why wouldn't everyone just join that plan than pay more for the same coverage from a private insurance company?

All besides the point. If Hillary were for a medical care system ala Medicare, and so ala the medical care systems in Europe and the English speaking countries, she would just put it out there. On Kucinich had it right: both Hillary and Obama are appealing to medical industry lobbyists in the plans they have proposed.

Im sorry but the BO supporters have been rats for their treatment of Hillary fans and of the Clintons themselves. No else may say but sure the hell will!

What is Obamas answer?

She hasn't provided specifics on how the payment will be enforced, but her plan does not allow people to "opt out" by paying a penalty instead.

Everyone will be covered, because the alternative is either letting people die if they chose not to purchase insurance (an outcome no one supports) or else giving people a free ride until they get sick, at which point they either get charged for "back premiums" or else the taxpayers get stuck with the bill.

There's certainly a political challenge in talking about garnishing wages and so forth, but the illusion is that Obama's plan is somehow easier to swallow.  It's easier only if you pay no attention to the difficult question of what happens when an uninsured person gets sick.

How are you going to get mad at Hillary for not answering the question but give Obama a pass! You see that is why we have a hard time with u Obama supporters! Hillary is evil and no different from Bush, But obama does the same things and he gets a pass!

In addition to ER, Medicaid, and Medicare recipients, don't forget government workers who get taxpayer-subsidized insurance. I'm one of them, and it's great.

You're not "getting" everyone healthcare under HRC's plan. You're forcing them to buy it.

However, you seem unable to answer the cost issue which is what I was looking for.  

Understood. I think mandates are a loser but that's not really what I'm wondering about. I'm wondering how there can be a substantial difference in cost if 285 million have insurance plans vs. 300 million.