I'd like to share my thoughts of why I think that Hillary Clinton would be the best choice as our next president.
First, I have to honestly say that a large part of it is because I liked what Bill Clinton did as president and I am pretty sure that Hillary will have similar policies and approaches.
One of the first things that Clinton did was to lift the ban on fetal tissue research. Prior to this, the Reagan and Bush administrations had callously ignored the pleas from the scientific and medical communities to lift the ban. My mother had Parkinsons for the last 25 years of her life. Her neurologist told us that this Reagan/Bush imposed ban was one reason that little progress had been made to find new treatments for Parkinsons.
Ironically, years later when Ronald Reagan was diagnosed as having Alzheimer's, his wife became an advocate for lifting the Bush imposed ban on stem cell research.
What was very meaningful to me is that Clinton was aware of the suffering of people with Parkinsons, diabetes, Alzheimers, and other diseases that could be helped by further research -- even though he didn't have family members with these diseases.
This is something that I see as characteristic of both Clintons. In her book, It Takes A Village, Hillary demonstrates a great awareness of the needs of other peoples' children. She spent much of her career advocating for children's health issues, and is largely responsible for getting the SCHIP passed -- legislation that provides medical coverage for as many as 6 million children that would be otherwise uninsured.
I think that most democrats agree that we need universal health coverage. While both Hillary and Obama have addressed the issue, there is one major difference which I think is significant. Hillary's plan mandates that everyone have coverage. People who have jobs will be required to pay a percentage of their income toward this coverage unless their income is too low, in which case they will be government subsidized. Under Obama's plan, adults are not required to have insurance, though he believes that the cost will be low enough that everyone will purchase coverage.
I don't believe that everyone will purchase coverage, even if they can afford it. In Massachusetts, before the recent legislation that required everyone to have health insurance, a study was done. The study showed that the largest segment of the population that was not insured was eligible for medicaid, and subsequently these people were enrolled in medicaid. The other thing that was learned is the second largest group of people without coverage are single males that are employed.
My son who was in his twenties, purchased an individual, private policy for $175 a month. He purchased it because his father and I insisted that he have health insurance. I think a lot of young people would decide not to purchase the health insurance if it wasn't mandated. When people are young and healthy, they often don't see the need to buy the health insurance. Other things take priority. But what happens is that eventually something will happen to some of these people that will require expensive medical coverage. And if they don't have insurance and they don't have much in savings, we will have to absorb the costs.
Here is an example of a case where the uninsured contributes to the high cost of medical care: A friend of ours was uninsured. Two years ago, Rick, a friend of our family, was in a car crash. He was in the hospital in a coma for two months. The hospital bill was over three hundred thousand. He was uninsured. Of course he didn't have the money to pay the bill, so the hospital absorbed the costs for his treatment, which subsequently means that the hospital costs are higher for everyone.
The other reason why I am very supportive of Hillary as president is the economy. At the end of the first George Bush senior's presidency, our economy was in a mess. The deficit was running higher and higher. The national debt was the highest it had ever been and I really didn't think there was anything that a president could do to make much of a difference.
I was surprised that not only did Clinton get the budget balanced, but after a few years, a surplus was created and the national debt actually started to come down. In New York City, Times Square, there was, up until 2000, something called the "Debt Clock," which shows the rising amount of money the United States owes to creditors. This amount has been going up by leaps and bounds during the Reagan and Bush years.
During the Clinton administration, the amount actually started to come down. Strangely, the person who owned the clock had it covered during that time so that people would not see the debt come down.
A few years ago, I read Clinton's autobiography, My Life. A section of the book discussed the approach that he and his advisors took to balance the budget. Hillary was one of his advisors at this time and I'm sure that if she is elected president, Bill Clinton will be part of the team that tackles the massive deficit/debt problem that this country has now.
These are the major reasons why I want to see Hillary win this election.