And I'm glad that Hillary isn't afraid to talk about it. Our health care system IS screwed up, and just hoping for "change" isn't enough to solve this problem. We need to ensure everyone has quality, affordable coverage, so that no person is denied care ever again.

Its almost criminal that we do not have universal healthcare yet here in the USA.  Excellent Diary, as usual.  

Thank You Alegre for posting this. I literally cried for an hour-before I was able to come here to post.

My two cents. There is a nicely wooded area I go to on warm sunny days to read, and watch the antics of the young Seagulls.

Last week, two woman, one 58 and other other 59 years old, at differnt times, invaded my space. I ended up talking to them separately. It seemed a nursing home they both had worked at for their entire adults lives closed for financial reasons. Both lost not only their insurance, but also their homes, as the nursing home had been affiliated with a Religion, and they did not get retirement benefits. One had chronic diabetes. The other had a heart problem.

They had come to this wooded area searching for cans and bottles to turn in, so they could have some money for food. They both lived in shelters -different ones. I ended up in tears, and giving each of them 1/2 of the money I had on me. They soldered on, searching for more cans and bottles.

Feeling guilty for not being in their situation, I ended up spending the rest of the afternoon also searching for cans and bottles. I put them in the trunk of my car and made an ATM withdrawal - then drove to the two shelters, and left 1/2 the money I had withdrawn and 1/2 of the cans and bottles I collected for each woman.

Shame on all of us in America that our citizens, who worked hard all their lives, end up in such desperate straits.

Republicans all seem to think nothing needs to change. Everything's hunky-dorey no need to fix what ain't broken if we stay the course we'll be just fine.

And by we they mean they and their rich pals and to hell with the rest of us.

I'm so freakin' sick of this - when will people wake up and stop voting against their own best intersts?

Hey I used to write stuff like this all the time before folks started attacking her.  Every now and then I get to hear her talk in person and it's a very inspiring experience.

She brings out the better side in so many people - including me! ;o)

THIS Obama supporter is happy to applaud this compassionate diary.

What a sad story.  

Hillary's plan is the ONLY universal plan out there at this point, and she knows this issue like nobody else.

If anyone can make this happen, she can.

Everyone needs to be covered. Otherwise, we don't have universal health care... And we don't make care more affordable for anyone. If we want to lower costs and provide quality care for everyone, we can't accept anything less than REAL univeral care.

Yup.

Hubby comes from Ireland and everyone's got access to health care.  No ifs.  No ands.  No buts.  Everyone.

It's inexcusable that 47 million are without insurance here.  Even with insurance there's no guarantee of care - they deny coverage all the time.  That's another aspect of this mess that needs fixing and Hillary's on it.

Hubby's from Ireland - he's always bragging about how great their system is there and he's a right to dammit.  

Everyone's got access to a doctor if they need one.  Same for dentists and eye doctors.  Mental health - it's all tied together instead of broken up and parceled out to one insurance company or another.

 "....we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

  Declaration of Independence

 Our fortunes would go towards Universal Health Care as I see it.

namaste.

Hillary's addressed the issue of modernization as well.

And obviously I think she not only has a better understanding of the issues involved, but she's better prepared and more determined to make the right changes happen.

a healthcare plan that leaves 15 million people uninsured isn't an option, especially since the people obama assumes will sign up voluntarily are people like this woman- young, healthy, either unemployed or working in a job with no health care benefits, and poor. these are exactly the kinds of tragedies that the obama plan doesn't prevent, and hillary's plan does.

"I think Obama has a better handle on this issue, the focus on modernization is a crucial step in my opinion.  However, healthcare is the one issue that should help us all realize voting for McCain is not an option."

Obama's health care plan is grossly unworkable. Nothing in it has been proven to lower health care costs, which will continue to escalate, because it does not include everyone (only a mandate for coverage will do that). Not mandating care will allow young and healthy people to avoid paying into the system until they become very ill or seriously injured, so it is like homeowners waiting to buy insurance on their homes until they are burning down. Obviously that is economically unworkable and unsustainable, and ridiculous to suggest.

In Massachusetts, where the mandate which has gone into effect this year, it has had an extraordinary effect on lower income people, who are fully, or almost fully subsidized for coverage. In every other state where coverage is voluntary, only an average of approximately 47% of the poor are signed up for coverage under subsidized insurance programs they are eligible for, like Medicaid. More than half go without. Even in the states with the best rates, 60% covered is considered outstanding. In Massachusetts 92% of lower income people are now covered with comprehensive and valuable coverage. That has otherwise been considered an impossible rate to achieve, beyond comprehension. That was why in the SCHIP battle the Bush administration required that states cover 90% of the poorest children who are eligible before extending coverage to higher income bracket folks, because that rate was considered impossible to match without a legal mandate.

For the middle class the mandate will be more difficult for those who do not have employer based insurance, so Hillary has included subsidies for small business and the self employed to ease the costs, as well as much more generous subsidies for those who are lower middle class. Her plan will restrict the amount any family must pay for health insurance to a low percentage of annual income, so it is far, far more progressive than paying premiums based on medical history, risk, and age, the most regressive payment system of all.

Hillary's mandate plan will get the powerful and vocal American middle class mobilized on this issue, and it will be up to all of us to make sure the universal health care system is the very best quality coverage we are capable of. It will not be a "poverty program" like Medicaid, vulnerable to being slashed by the next conservative administration bent on "starving the beast". It will be like Medicare and Social Security, and the great middle class will have a huge stake in fighting to make it sustainable and outstanding. We will succeed in protecting it, as we have with Medicare and Social Security. It would establish the Democrats in a position of power and leadership with the public for generations, and the Republicans know this, and it is one of many reasons they need to destroy Hillary Clinton.

The mandate is essential for universal health care to be workable and sustainable. Around the world nations have successfully employed the mandate to establish universal health care systems.

Obama has done his best to scare voters and demonize the idea of the mandate, just like the right wing has done all along, and he is deeply damaging the very concept we must employ to ever achieve universal health care. That a Democrat should demonize universal health care is unconscionable. He is violating and betraying core Democratic and progressive values, and most of all betraying the poorest and most vulnerable of his constituents, who will not be covered, and will die of lack of care.

Hillary Clinton's health care plan also includes a publicly administered, Medicare like program as an alternative to paying for private health insurance, as John Edward's plan did, which offers the seed of a real single payer national health insurance plan. If more and more Americans choose the public program, it could blossom, and then we would have a "Medicare for All" national program that would eliminate the awful administrative waste of our current plethora of thousands of insurance plans with complex paperwork that uses up in excess of 16% of all health care dollars. We would have the enormous tools of economies of scale to lower costs across the board. We could safely institute electronic medical records because then no one could be denied coverage should their medical history become known through security violations, which are inevitable. Electronic medical records can greatly improve efficiency and patient safety, offering across the board improvement to our care. They will make it possible to track treatment successes and failures in a grand scale never before available, and will give us the tools to achieve standards of care far better than any we have ever known.

There is a great dream on the line here, and it is crucial to fight for the vision and in depth sophistication of Hillary's health care plan, that will bring a revolution to the way we care for everyone in the US.

Vote Hillary!

 I  don't know if you work in the health care industyr or not- but I do and all too often people can't get coverage on something that is pre-existing this is a huge issue more so than "modernizing" IMHO as we are constantly upgrading and modernizing.

 I would like to know you folks all mean by "modernizing" as this is quite a broad statement.

Fighting for what "new initiatives?" Sorry but Obama's plan leaves too much out.

 Also- I was originally not in favor of having health insurance as I am one of those herbal folks and did not want to take money from my herbs to put into something I felt I would hardly even use but then I thought about for a bit and felt that if I could help out someone else who might need it by paying into a system, ie: purchasing health insurance at a much lower rate-but in so doing a portion of my unused monies would go to making sure someone else didn't have to worry about loosing their house or a kid not being able to go to college etc...or someone not having the $100 that was needed that it be worth it to me to know that was helping to take care of another in this way.
  We take care of our military's medical needs but we suck at taking care of each other's.

I work in P.T. and too often someone comes in from a car accident or some other type of major trauma who is not on Medicare and they don't have insurance and that's it they're screwed-the kid with the head trauma and no insurance that's some long term medical care that's gong to be needed and Rehab etc...modernization is pretty far along but making sure eveeryone is covered is of utmost importance.

Especially if later on down the road this person is trying to get coverage and they have a pre-existing head trauma even if they have made major recovery they would have a very difficult time getting coverage-but not so under Hillary's/ Edwards plan.

 I would be interested though to know what the DME (Durable Medical Equipment) coverage would be and any in home care needs would be covered-this again would be more important than "modernization."

 just mho.
   namaste

I completely agree. Excellent diary. I too believe that Obama's healthcare plan is better, but either is far better than what we'll get if a Democrat doesn't win this race.

And neither is as good as single-payer, which is really what we need to get to.

Agreed!

I'm so sorry to hear about your mom - I'd put money on each and every one of us knowing someone who was denied care because of the insurance company, or because they didn't have coverage and couldn't afford it.

My own grandmother got sub-par care in a nursing home during recovery from a fall (broke her femur).  She never recovered.

We desperately need someone who'll get in there, roll up her sleeves and get the job done.  There's no time to waste and lives are literally hanging in the balance here.

I don't know what hospital she was at - Hillary never said and probably wouldn't unless she had documentation etc.

I can't believe this was legal though.

All the econ. experts say it won't happen without mandates.  Krugman especially spoke out on this point.

In 1994 it took a unified Republican Party, a few Democratic waverers, and tens of millions of dollars from the health insurance industry to sink our last good chance at universal health care.

This time we're about to lose the battle in the Democratic primary. And the Democratic Party leaders can't wait.

This seems wildly off topic here, but, Obama is for removing those tax cuts just as much as Clinton is. If you'd listened to his speech on the economy today you're realize that his position is that the rich have gotten far too rich and that we need to sharply reduce the rich-poor disparity.

I see no evidence -- no, nada, zip, zero -- that Big Money is behind Obama. His average donation is about $100 and only 3% of his financing is from donors who contribute the maximum. It's virtually impossible to bundle under those conditions, and Obama releases his bundlers in any case.

Yes, there are a few big money people who support Obama. There are also big money people who support Clinton and McCain. Maybe they're all paid for by Big Money? Certainly a Presidential election is chump change for anyone with $10B or more.

I refuse to be anywhere near that cynical. I'll go with the facts, and there are plenty available, and they all point the other way.

" A mandate to buy health insurance doesn't help you if you can't afford it."

Under the mandate plan if you cannot afford health insurance you are subsidized for the cost of insurance, you receive the care you need until you  no longer need the subsidy. That is the point of it.

It comes closer to establishing a "Human right to health care" than we have veer had in this country. It is really a mandate on government to supply the means to receive health care for everyone who cannot afford it. Please be clear on this, it is important.

I dislike Wolfson just as much as you do.

This is uncalled-for in this diary.

oops, on this planet of course.  I got so emotional that I cannot even type.

I feel the same way. If the election goes the way I strongly hope it does, Clinton will be a very important figure in the Senate. She'll be highly involved in getting UHC through, and in supporting the other things she's been campaigning on.

This is not a loss for Clinton's agenda. Obama and Clinton share a great deal of the same agenda. In fact, the person sitting in the White House is going to have less control over things like mandates vs. no mandates, etc, than the people who actually author the legislation, get it through committee, etc.

It's a tough choice between two really good candidates for President. I dislike some things Clinton has done in this campaign, and many, many things her campaign has done; I still think she's a great candidate and under nearly any other circumstances would've won the nomination going away. And she's going to continue to be a very important voice in the Senate.

How about, if Obama wins, Clinton is the lead author on the UHC bill? Sounds plenty good to me.

Even if this story is apocryphal, and i have no reason to believe that it is, there are plenty of stories like this EVERY DAY, in your town, involving your friends, your family, your loved ones.

Look at the links that Architek posted way up top to the LA Times. They illustrate every point made in this diary.

that universal coverage is NOT the same as universal care.

it is true that stories like this happen very day, but the other thing that happens every day is that people WITH COVERAGE do not get care from the companies that are supposed to be providing it.  Doesn't anyone here remember SiCKO?  Or the Nataline case?

Mandates are NOT working in Massachusetts.  I live here, I worked on the (horribly watered down) legislation, and I know.

My heart bleeds for the woman in the story, and I also remember the little boy who died because of his toothache.  But I would rather have a no-mandate plan that has a better chance of getting thru Congress (as a first step toward single payer someday) than a mandated plan that will be too easy for the Republicans and Blue Dogs to block just as they did in 1993.

This diary is beautifully written and deserves to be seen by everyone.  But IMO, the abundance of health care horror stories out there are the reason we need a Democratic president over a Republican one, not the reason we need HRC over O.

"Everyone in the country should see the movie "Sicko"

Sicko is an excellent opinion piece, and single payer is the best possible health care reform option. Unfortunately voters no longer trust the efficiency or competence of our government to administer a national health insurance program, no matter the enormous advantages it would confer. That is why both John Edwards and Hillary Clinton had to create health care reform proposals that allow people to keep the health insurance they have if they like it, despite the tremendous inefficiency and waste that private health insurance companies impose on the whole of health care costs (approximately 31% of total costs, 300 billion dollars or so, is lost every year, and climbing, enough to cover every resident in this country).

The Clinton and Edwards incremental plans include the option for people to join a Medicare for All like public option plan. If it gained the trust and favor of Americans, and they chose it in large numbers, we could be well on the way to a truly efficient Medicare (plus) for All type universal health care program. It would be a boon for everyone, including, I believe business, which over time would pay significantly less for employee health care than they do today, with health insurance cost escalation destroying their competitiveness in the international market.

Single payer is the best option, but we must let people choose it, it cannot be imposed from above on people who do not want it, and feel they have earned the coverage they have. It is like trying to impose democracy in Iraq, it doesn't work to try to force it on people, and backfires against those who try to force a solution.

If government earns the trust of voters to administer health care by bringing a comprehensive, high quality health care option to the table, we can have the efficient universal health care we need.

That is the brilliance of the Clinton and Edwards health care plans.

"To me, Barack Obama has done more to hurt the cause of universal health care than anyone since 1994."

And Paul Krugman of the NYT agrees with you!

And I wish Hillary WOULD propose a plan to cover us, not one where people have to buy their own insurance (albeit with subsidy provisions).  Medicare for all is the way to go.  Much simpler and it covers everyone via the tax system.

I was just writing about this in the post above, but mandatory care is an essential piece of solving this puzzle, and for purely economic reasons.  I think Sen. Obama has done a good job taking advantage of the fact that "mandate" sounds bad.  But the economic reality is that mandates are a very good thing, and perhaps essential (see my prior post please).

In fact, I was thinking about this in the morning when I woke up (scary, I know) - Sen. Obama was confronted with the fact, fact, that his plan will leave between 15 and 25 million uninsured.  And I found his response kind of interesting.  Paraphrasing, his response was essentially: I really resent Hillary implying that I'm not in favor of universal healthcare.

But.. at issue is not what Sen. Obama likes or favors.  At issue is what his plan delivers.  And a fact not disputed by even his own people is that his plan falls at least 15 million Americans short.  I think that's important.

Actually, the facts are not that simple.

Under the Obama plan, that poor woman would have tax subsidies available, to help her afford the health care.  She could still opt out, though, and so the tragedy described here could still (and likely would?) happen.  Not only is it emotionally painful, but each of us who does have health insurance pays about $900 per year to cover the costs incurred in situations like that.

Under the Clinton plan, that poor woman would have tax subsidies too, but she would also have the protection of a cost cap - her annual insurance premium cannot exceed a certain % of her income (they have talked about a figure starting at 10% and perhaps worked down to 5% as the cost saving measures of the plan begin to sink in.)

She discusses this more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/us/pol itics/28clinton.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Also, under the Clinton plan, that woman would have been insured, because it would have been required of her employer to see to it.  Yes, she would have had to spend some of her limited income on it (no more than 10%).  But then, she and her child would probably still be alive.

So, it is easy to give into the talking point that a mandate is bad and that garnishing her wages would be bad.  But, understand that without a mandate, each of us is paying a $900 tax each year.  Realize that, without a mandate, you will reach about half of the folks like her, and at a cost of about $4400 per person.  With a mandate, you reach all of them, at a cost of $2700 per person.  (see: Adverse Selection, preventive v. crisis care, etc)

Look, even if you had government provided healthcare, you would still have to "garnish her meager wages", but you would be doing it in the form of a hefty tax increase.  Whether we find it acceptable or not, you cannot get something for nothing.  Everything has a cost.

It is this kind of misrepresentation of mandates, using the phantom threat of garnishing poor people's wages, that kills Democratic attempts at universal health coverage. How are Democrats supposed to make progress toward progressive goals if we attack those goals with conservative talking points during the primary?

This attack on mandates from the Obama campaign and from his supporters is what convinces me that there would be no progress toward UHC in an Obama administration.

"That's why we need a girl president"

Is that what it comes down to? How would it sound if I said that's why we need a black president. Ridiculous huh? How about we need an effective President, a knowledgeable President, a smart President. All of those things I can buy. We don't need a "girl" President. If the best candidate happens to be a woman, then that's the person we need. In this case, in my opinion, that's not the case.

You've articulated many of the thoughts that I've had recently.  As someone who likes and respects both of our candidates, I'm baffled by the acrimony in our party. The anger and spite being directed at Clinton is incomprehensible, and seems out of proportion to anything she has said or done.  Yes, she has blundered and her surrogates said things that offended me but that is equally true of Obama.  Why are so many dems determined to dwell on her every gaffe?

Some are seemingly scandalized because she is (gasp) serious about winning this thing.  Yes, she is fighting like a she-devil and you know what?  I like that about her.  I am sick to death of democrats who take the high road and lose.  If John Kerry had half as much fire as she does, the past four years might have been entirely different.  I want to know that our candidate is a street brawler who will fight tooth and nail in the GE.  Anyone who thinks we can beat McCain by taking the high road is fooling themselves.  

Some of the very progressives who hate her guts also claim to know exactly what she is thinking-I'm looking at you, Kos.  "She is tearing our party asunder and she 'doesn't care.'" Really?  Prove either of those statements.  She's an "opportunist" who is delighted to team up with Scaife, the very wingnut who funded the Arkansas Project, to achieve her shameless ambitions.  Why  would anyone assume that she was pleased to be meeting with that horrible man?  She's a human being.  I'd bet my last dollar that she has zero respect or fondness for the man who caused her and her family so much distress.  

I've begun to think that Obama will win this thing and that's OK with me but I still have a nagging sense of dissatisfaction, because  I don't think this was a fair contest.  The media has been far more harsh on Clinton that they have been on Obama.  Chris Matthews is one extreme example; the bias is usually more subtle, but pernicious none the less.  Maybe it's sexism, which is a deepressing thought, or maybe it's simply that her last name is Clinton and it's permissible to the saying anything about the Clintons.  Whatever the case, it saddens me. Hillary has always impressed me as someone who is sincere about wanting to use government to improve the lives of Americans.  I hope she will continue to do so in some capacity. I also hope that Obama wants to win as much as she does.  If not, he might as well start crafting his eloquent, graceful concession speech.  

Lord Mr Hume (Nobel Prize Winner for his role in bring peace to N. Ireland) stated "I am quite surprised that anyone would suggest that Hillary Clinton did not perform important foreign policy work as First Lady," the statement said.

"I can state from firsthand experience that she played a positive role for over a decade in helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland. She visited Northern Ireland, met with very many people and gave very decisive support to the peace process.

"There is no doubt that the people of Northern Ireland think very positively of Hillary Clinton's support for our peace process, due to her visits to Northern Ireland and her meetings with so many people. In private she made countless calls and contacts, speaking to leaders and opinion makers on all sides, urging them to keep moving forward."