Sunday, November 17, 2013

Where Did Obama's "If You Like Your Plan, You Can Keep Your Plan" Promise Come From?

During the 2008 Presidential primaries, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were battling each other to become the Democratic candidate for the General election. They clashed with one another on the issue of health care. The only major difference between the two candidate's health care plan was that Hilary Clinton had an individual mandate while Barack Obama's health plan didn't. However, Obama would later include the individual mandate into his health care plan. Once he incorporated the individual mandate, he also incorporated her campaign promise:

Hilliary Clinton told the American people this: 



Obama would go on to repeat Hillary Clinton's promise 36 times:


Obama stole that infamous campaign promise from Hilliary Clinton. 

That 2008 campaign promise that "if you like your plan/doctor/hospital, you can keep it" is a lie. It was a lie told by both candiates. One of those candidates would later become President in 2008. The other candidate is thinking of running in 2016.

UPDATE (4/11/15):  The Wall Street Journal just came across a memo that one of Hillary Clinton's staffers wrote  nearly 20 years ago during the summer of 1994 which reads, “If you like your Blue Cross you can keep your BC.” The next line extends that promise to Aetna, Prudential, and any similar insurer. See the memo below:

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Hillary Clinton's 2016 Health Care Problem

There has been a lot of speculation about the possibility of Hillary Clinton running in 2016. The biggest hurdle for Hilliary is her health care plans that she proposed back in 1993 and in 2008.  Why will her old health care plans come back to haunt her in 2016?
 
Obama was inspired by Hillary Clinton's 2008 health care plan that she offered during her bid to become President during that time:
In 2009, President Obama adopted Senator Clinton’s plan almost in its entirety. Obamacare is Hillarycare 2.0. All of the harmful consequences of Obama’s individual mandate — people losing their policies, higher premiums, and increased tax burdens — were the foreseeable consequences of Clinton’s plan. Any criticisms of Obamacare can be aimed equally at Hillary Clinton.
In 2008, the linchpin of Senator Clinton’s health care plan program was a mandate that all Americans must buy health insurance. Those who did not would pay a penalty. 
In fact, during a Presidential debate, Obama admitted that almost all of the ideas for his health care plan was cribbed from Hillary Clinton's health care plan: 
At a primary debate, Hillary complained that “Senator Obama has consistently said that I would force people to have health care whether they could afford it or not.”
And Obama countered, “I have consistently said that Senator Clinton’s got a good health care plan. I think I have a good health care plan. I think mine is better. But I have said that 95 percent of our health care plan is similar.”
“The reason she thinks that there are more people covered under her plan than mine is because of a mandate. That is not a mandate for the government to provide coverage to everybody. It is a mandate that every individual purchase health care.”
Now we know that Obama's health care plan was completely ripped from Hillary Clinton's 2008 health care plan since the linchpin of ObamaCare is the individual mandate which he later implemented after becoming President. Thus, Barack Obama's claims that Mitt Romney's healthcare plan was the basis for ObamaCare is a lie based on his own admission. 

Given that Obama's health care plan is really based completely on Hillary's ideas, I now realize that the name for President Obama's health care "ObamaCare" is a misnomer. It really should be called HillBamaCare.

The fact that Obama implemented every aspect of Hillary's 2008 health care plan is a problem. However, the deeper and bigger problem for Mrs. Clinton is that she shares Obama's progressive belief in an growing the size and scope of government in which there is a paternalistic welfare state that offers an array of entitlements to take care of the citizens from cradle to grave. In short, both believe in that the government can solve the needs and problems of its citizens. 

Since Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both ardent supporters of a massive welfare state, it is no surprise that they both of them rely on a monstrous maze of government bureaucracy to run their health care plans. It is the central core of making their health plans work.

Back in 1993, this is what the bureaucracy behind HillaryCare would have looked like if it was implemented: 


This is the bureaucracy behind ObamaCare today:

As you can see, the core mechanism for Hillary's 1993 health care plan and ObamaCare rely on a massive bureaucracy to keep it running. If Mrs. Clinton does decide to run in 2016, the devastating blow that the failure of ObamaCare has done to the liberal/progressive promise that our government can competently, honestly and frugally manage our health care may be too big for Hillary to overcome. 
 
If Hillary Clinton runs in 2016, she won't be offering a plan to overhaul ObamaCare but she will be offering tweaks and modifications to HillBamaCare. The problem with that is that any adjustment or improvement she proposes will further increase uncertainty and disruption in the market place. Americans have been nauseous with economic uncertainty ever since Obama's health care plan was passed in 2008 and they're not willing to stomach another four more years of economic disruption caused by further "fixes" to HillBamaCare in 2016. Americans will have had enough in progressive experimentation and tinkering of our health care by then.

Americans will start revolting against ObamaCare in 2014 and the anger may continue well into 2016. Hillary cannot back away from ObamaCare since her 2008 health care plan is too intertwined with ObamaCare. She cannot back away from her progressive beliefs about government having a role in almost every aspect of American's lives including their choices regarding health care. ObamaCare is a colossal failure and any attempt to try to keep it alive or any promise that it will get better will be utterly rejected by the American people.

Both Obama and Hillary have staked their political futures on a progressive reform of America's health care. That's why HillBamaCare will be a huge obstacle for her in 2016.