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"Since when do Democrats attack one another on universal healthcare?" - Hillary Clinton, 2008
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_X-RoRghAY&feature=youtu.be&t=161
On Medicare-for-All, Clinton Reminds Us That She's Part of the Problem | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_X-RoRghAY&feature=youtu.be&t=161
On Medicare-for-All, Clinton Reminds Us That She's Part of the Problem | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community
If the Hillary Clinton campaign had its way, supporters of Bernie Sanders – whose backing she will obviously want in November should she win the Democratic nomination – would feel that, while Clinton might not be all that they want in a president, she would at least go part of the way there. But if you followed the third debate deep enough into the night, you witnessed, in what stands as the most disingenuous moment of the Democratic race thus far, Clinton not simply disagreeing with Sanders on his Medicare For All, single payer health insurance plan, but knowingly distorting it. This was not Hillary Clinton offering a more moderate version of a solution, this was Hillary Clinton acting as part of the problem.
Clinton argued that the Sanders plan “really does transfer every bit of our health care system including private health care, to the states to have the states run. And I think we've got to be really thoughtful about how we're going to afford what we proposed.” Between that and Sanders’s public university free tuition plan, she said “we’re looking at 18 to $20 trillion.” And indeed, the single-payer bill Sanders introduced in 2013 called for a 2.2 percent tax on individual incomes up to $200,000 and couples up to $250,000 (and higher rates for higher brackets), a group she pledges would see no tax increases under a Clinton administration. But the reason that a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 52 percent of Democrats strongly backing a Medicare For All plan, and another 29 percent somewhat favoring it, is that they understand that there is a payback for that tax increase. And so does Hillary Clinton.
In ignoring the fact that a single payer plan would, as Sanders quickly pointed out, do “away with the cost of private insurance,” meaning that “the middle class will be paying substantially less for health care,” not only was Clinton wrong on the claim that the Sanders plan would cost the middle class more, but she knew it. As Sanders said of her, “I know you know a lot about health care.” Hillary Clinton, let’s remember, was the point person for Bill Clinton’s unsuccessful 1993 health insurance reform, to the point where it was sometimes called “Hillarycare.” People have applied a lot of negative labels to Hillary Clinton over the years, but “stupid” is not one you hear very often. This was not an actor like Ronald Reagan, delivering lines he may or may not have understood. This was not George W. Bush, struggling over words and concepts. It was a telling, cynical moment.