I’ve been writing about the dust-up between Hillary & Obama over their health care plans lately (more than I expected to) – mainly because there seems to be something new each day that needs to be set right. Today’s no exception.
The Chicago Tribune had a good article up Tuesday about the latest round in this dust-up.
The two Democratic candidates have been sparring in recent days over health care, with Clinton charging that Obama’s health plan would not offer true universal coverage because he would not require all Americans to buy into a plan as she would. Obama has countered that his proposal offers guaranteed access at lower costs.
“One of the things Sen. Obama takes credit for as a state senator is a health care task force that looked into the question of how do you provide universal health care in Illinois,” Clinton said. “[That report] was clear: if you want universal health care you have to have a mandate.”
Make the jump – there’s more…
So here’s what caught my attention this evening…
In Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune, the Obama campaign claims that Hillary opposed an individual mandate for health care in the 1990s:
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said Clinton was opposed to an individual mandate when she was pushing for health care reform in the 1990s.
That’s false. In fact, Hillary’s 1993 plan–the Health Security Act–included an individual mandate.
That link just above? That’s Hillary’s health care plan from 1993. Read it guys – you might learn somethin’ ;o)
More from that Chicago Tribune article…
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said Clinton was opposed to an individual mandate when she was pushing for health care reform in the 1990s.
snip
Clinton’s campaign later challenged any suggestion that she ever wavered in supporting a mandate.
“The Obama campaign is flat wrong,” Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said. “Sen. Clinton has always believed that an individual mandate is key to achieving universal coverage which is why the Clinton administration’s 1993 health security act contained an individual requirement.”
Clinton, meanwhile, pointed out that Obama’s proposal does require parents to provide coverage for their children.
“So, it’s not that he’s against mandates and doesn’t understand that there are a number of ways of implementing them,” she said. “He got up to the edge of whether or not to support universal coverage and backed down because it is a more difficult goal to achieve.”
Clinton said she is puzzled by Obama’s approach.
“Sen. Obama now criticizing a mandate, when he has one in his own plan, when he helped to set up a task force that says there has to be a mandate,” she said. “And there are lots of ways to do it, through default enrollment, through going to schools, workplaces to enroll people.”
(emphasis mine)
Now I’ve also heard quite a bit about Hillary’s recent switch to a more aggressive campaign style. Here’s what she had to say about all that…
“I have for months tried to stay positively on the issues, to talk about what I will do as president, to set forth my credentials and experience, the strengths that I think I bring to the position,” she said. “But I have been attacked pretty regularly by my two leading opponents, and it’s gone on for months. So, at some point, as we get toward the end of these campaigns, you have to stand up and rebut what people are saying and put out the contrasts and that is what I intend to do.”
Not a bad article – thought it was worth sharing here. Check out the whole thing – it’s long but it’s well worth taking a look.
I wrote most of the above last night but there’ve been a few new developments between saving the draft, and my coming back to it this evening…
Marc Ambinder at that Atlantic had this to say about Obama’s continued instance on repeating the lies about Hillary’s position on mandates back in the `90s…
What Clinton opposed was an a la carte mandate proposed by John Chafee, one that would have scrapped the entire employer based system in favor of a government mandate that everyone purchase insurance — without a government guarantee of help to those who couldn’t afford it.
Snip
Chafee’s plan was called by Democrats the “individual mandate” plan, which sounds enticing to today’s ears… but it’s not the same as the plan Clinton proposed in September of 2007, which includes generous government subsidies for the poor and a menu of options for small businesses (a very modified version of “pay or play”).
Snip
“For that is how most of my colleagues, Republican and Democrat, enter the Senate…their words distorted, and their motives questioned,” Obama writes in The Audacity of Hope. As Senator Clinton might today say: “Indeed.”
And finally, they wrap this all up on Fact Hub by pointing to something that’s got me more than a little steamed. People have been spending the past two days correcting Obama’s claims about Hillary’s stand on mandates back in 1994. Hillary did not oppose mandates back in the 90s, and yet here we see that Obama’s repeating his lies about her on his website. From Fact Hub…
A rival campaign is circulating a speech Hillary gave on February 15, 1994 and falsely claiming she opposed an individual mandate. In fact, her 1993 legislation included an individual mandate. Hillary learned a lot from her experience fighting for universal healthcare in 1993, and has changed some of the ways she approaches the issue to reflect that experience. But she has never wavered from her belief that you simply cannot cover all Americans without including an individual requirement.
In 1994, there was a Republican plan by the late John Chafee that would have replaced the employer-based health care system with individual market insurance and a stand-alone individual mandate. At the time, people commonly used the term “individual mandate” to refer to Chafee’s plan. Her criticisms were of the Chafee plan – and the challenges of abandoning the employer based system that insured most Americans — not of the concept of individual mandate itself.
Notwithstanding these concerns, Hillary praised the late Senator for having the goal of covering all Americans. This stands in contrast to Sen. Obama’s plan, which leaves out millions of Americans.
UPDATE: The Obama campaign has posted these inaccurate claims about Hillary on its website. Hillary supported an individual mandate in the 1990s; that’s why she included it in her plan that built on the employer-based system. Here’s then Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos appearing on CNN on February 3, 1994:
The problem is that there are very few ways to guarantee that every American can get insurance. You could go for a tax, which the president doesn’t want to do. He thinks that’s wrong. Pretty much the only other way to guarantee that is some combination of an employer mandate and an individual mandate, some way to guarantee that people get their insurance coverage. We think that that’s essential.
As explained above, all of the quotes listed on the Obama campaign’s website refer to the late Sen. Chafee’s stand-alone individual mandate. Hillary’s plan today has an individual mandate but, unlike Chafee’s, builds on the employer-based system.
Ahem… she was talking about CHAFEE’s PLAN for feck sake! How many times does someone have to explain that to him???? How many people have to point that out to him?
HULLO????
Ya know… its one thing to go after your opponent by “pointing out the differences” between your plans, records and proposals. But in this case, Obama’s trying to excuse his lack of courage in failing to make sure we’re ALL covered by his health reform plan by pointing to Hillary and claiming she did it too.
And dammit – that’s just flat out wrong.
He’s wrong on the facts.
And he’s wrong in that he’s perpetuating this lie on his website.
Cross-posted at HillarysBloggers.com, and DailyKos,com