Hillary Clinton’s Health care plans were centered in expanding the frame of the present programs; from the extension of Medicaid to CHIP to Obamacare, but really had nothing big in scope until a few months back when she included in her plan this outline
Continue to support a “public option”—and work to build on the Affordable Care Act to make it possible. As she did in her 2008 campaign health plan, and consistently since then, Hillary supports a “public option” to reduce costs and broaden the choices of insurance coverage for every American. To make immediate progress toward that goal, Hillary will work with interested governors, using current flexibility under the Affordable Care Act, to empower states to establish a public option choice.
www.hillaryclinton.com/…
This Public Option plan, any public option plan would be a big step into really socialized medicine, seemed far fetched Brainwrap dedicated an interesting diary to her idea. Basically to circumvent Congress was to establish the PO estate by estate using the present framework of Obamacare. It would be a difficult road but a possible one.
Now, in a recent speech in Virginia she seems to also embrace the possibility of a national PO with a Medicare buy in at certain ages (basically that was Howard’s Dean plan when a handful of pond scum D senators killed the PO, and then J. Lieberman - need some mouthwash- single handily also killed Dean’s Medicare 55+ substitute for the PO)
"I'm also in favor of what's called the public option, so that people can buy into Medicare at a certain age," the Democratic presidential front-runner said during a roundtable with local residents at the Mug'N Muffin coffee shop. "Which will take a lot of pressure off the costs."
www.bloomberg.com/…
While Clinton long has supported including a public option in the insurance market, her campaign said she was floating the idea of letting Americans not yet of retirement age buy into the Medicare system as one way of accomplishing that. She's also open to creating a separate government-run option on the Obamacare exchanges.
I would love to see her campaign flesh this out into a real proposal. A national buy in at 55 or even 60 will take a lot of pressure from the markets and help the rest of Obamacare and will set a very important precedent. That precedent is why there was so much pressure to kill the PO during the Obamacare negotiations. I’m not sure if there is any chance of a plan like this going through Congress but its a great goal and a powerful message against Trump and the GOP. She needs a few concrete simple ideas to make her case for a better future. Medicare buy in is one. Setting something like that would be a real step towards a national health care system and universal health care.