Get Your Blog Up

“This administration is populated by people who’ve spent their careers bashing government. They’re not just small-government conservatives—they’re Grover Norquist, strangle-it-in-the-bathtub conservatives. It’s a cognitive disconnect for them to be able to do something well in an arena that they have so derided and reviled all these years.”

Senator Hillary Clinton

Sunday, January 29, 2006

All you need to know about health care policies

New York Times:
Where Mr. Clinton was driven by a desire to guarantee health insurance for every American, Mr. Bush is focusing primarily on health costs, which he says are swamping employers and threatening economic growth. Where Mr. Clinton favored a larger role for government, Mr. Bush has a fundamentally different philosophy, built on the idea that placing more responsibility in the hands of individuals will create market pressure to hold down costs.

So to recap:
Clinton - driven by providing health care to everyone, and saw government as the vehicle to do this

Bush - driven by the idea that health care costs are bad for business, and sees risk driven markets as the way to accomplish lower costs.

Now, a few questions.

1) Which plan seems to be more concerned with the average American? Which plan seems to be more concerned with the effect of health care on business?

2) Which plan seems to favor equal coverage for all? Which plan favors putting more risk on the shoulders of those who are supposed to be protected?

I'm sure Ezra could add more to this. But the basic idea seems pretty obvious to me.