HillaryCare Provides Nothing
Hillary Rodham Clinton ‘officially’ released her health care plan about a week ago and has been touting it for longer than that. Her website is flooded with self-praise for the plan. One of the issues raised by critics of the plan has been cost. The Wall Street Journal’s HillaryCare’s New Clothes basically says the numbers don’t add up.
In HRC’s press release of what she calls the ‘Nevada Impact Report’ of her plan, the Kaiser Family Foundation is referenced repeatedly implying support of her claims. The editorial page from the Wall Street Journal referenced above does not agree her $110 billion is the end of the program cost and that the details are being withheld by her campaign. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s website provides some other numbers, presented below, that may be helpful as well that are not offered in the HRC press release.
The table above was taken from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Health Care Snapshots page of their website and the data was entered into a spreadsheet to add the display of percentage increase for each country’s expenses between 1990 and 2003.
It is merely a random example of the big picture in health care. Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to speak about the benefits of her plan for all Americans. She does it in a way not unlike children who want their parents to get them a pet. All the child, in this case Hillary, can do is think of all the wonderful features of having a pet. Never giving equal time to the downside which in the case of pets is the feeding, grooming, bathing, care and attention and other tasks that come with pet ownership. Hillary on Health Care speaks to everything she believes you would want health care to be without paying attention to the downside. And the casual disregard for discussing the costs and how to pay for them is her biggest problem.
From data that is a few years old, the US spends about 2 trillion dollars on health care each year or about 15% of GDP. By now the $5600 dollar range of cost per person has probably exceeded $6000 or five hundred dollars per month. Like many other plans mentioned in the 2008 campaign, the focus is getting everyone insured and the claims by HRC in particular continues to suggest lower cost, quality health care for everyone. Forget about the options she mentions for keeping your insurance or using hers or whatever. The cost of health care and the quality of health care will not be solved by providing insurance coverage.
Of course the people and organizations she includes in her press releases will say this is a great thing. The Kaiser Family Foundation as well as all the health care ‘professionals’ she advertises will like the plan. They are all in the health care industry and any public funding of health care costs suits them just fine. Again, it does nothing to reduce the cost or improve the quality of health care. And if the cost of health care is not stabilized or reduced, the cost of Hillary’s program will rise every year like the table above and solve nothing.
Many items in the press release referenced here offer tax credits. That means you have to raise taxes elsewhere to offset the tax credit or the government’s checkbook takes a hit. Those are the kind of actions that increase budget deficits and the national debt plus put pressure on funds available for the private sector.
Another example of how things go in health care between the public and private sector is expressed in this excerpt from Health and Human Services. Private payers (primarily private health insurance and payments by individuals for co-pays, deductibles, and services not covered by insurance) funded more than half of national health expenditures in 2003, or $913.2 billion. The public sector funded $766 billion, with the Medicaid program funding 16 percent of aggregate health spending, or $267 billion, nearly equaling the 17 percent, $283 billion, spent by Medicare.
Hillary Rodham Clinton has mentioned a cost of $110 billion for her plan. The reference above from several years ago shows the public/private breakdown of paying for nearly two trillion in health care costs. Her plan will do nothing to lower costs. Her plan will do nothing for health care quality. Providing some people with health insurance will do nothing to lower the cost of health care itself. The people and the technology provide health care quality. It is not provided by health insurance.
The only reason the health care lobby, listed health care organizations or health care professionals like HillaryCare is that it provides public funds to pay for health care. Public funds in case you have forgotten are tax dollars from taxpayers. So either way the public pays for health care with or without HillaryCare. That won’t change. And the cost of that care or its quality will not change with HillaryCare either.
Lowering health care costs and raising the quality of health care provided is not being discussed. Providing health care insurance by shifting the cost of that insurance among private and public sources will solve nothing.
Stanford Matthews
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