Hillary Clinton’s sudden attack on Bernie Sanders’ single-payer health care plan is a dramatic break with Democratic Party doctrine that the problem with single-payer is that it is politically implausible — not that it is a bad idea.

Single-payer, the Canadian-style system in which the government pays for universal health care, takes the health insurance industry out of the picture, saving huge amounts of money. But the health insurance industry has become so rich and powerful that it would never let it happen.

That was certainly Clinton’s position back in the early 1990s, when she was developing her doomed universal coverage proposal for her husband, Bill.

But in the ensuing years, both Clintons have taken millions of dollars in speaking fees from the health care industry. According to public disclosures, Hillary Clinton alone, from 2013 to 2015, made $2,847,000 from 13 paid speeches to the industry.



This means that Clinton brought in almost as much in speech fees from the health care industry as she did from the banking industry. As a matter of perspective, recall that most Americans don’t earn $2.8 million over their lifetimes.

Hillary Clinton’s record on single-payer dates back to 1993, when she was tasked to help formulate White House policy. According to the notes of former Clinton confidante Diane Blair, Clinton told her husband during a dinner in February 1993 that “managed competition” — a private health insurance market — was “a crock, single payer necessary; maybe add to Medicare.”

She eventually came to believe that the health care industry was too powerful to allow this reform to happen, and the plan she ended up putting together was not single-payer. Also in 1993, two physician advocates for single-payer lobbied her during a meeting at the White House. They said she told them they made a “convincing case, but is there any force on the face of the earth that could counter the hundreds of millions of the dollars the insurance industry would spend fighting that?”

The next year, in response to a question at a financial conference, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton said that if there was not a health care overhaul “by the year 2000 we will have a single-payer system. I don’t think it’s — I don’t think it’s a close call politically. I think the momentum for a single-payer system will sweep the country.”

Behind the scenes, Clinton continued to show interest in a single-payer plan. David Brock wrote that Alain Enthoven, a Stanford professor who had been brought in to help advise on health care, pushed back on what Brock deemed “her bias toward the single-payer plan.”

In 2008, a young medical student named Lisa Goldman queried Clinton about health care during an event she held in New Haven, Connecticut. Goldman told the Boston Globe that Clinton said she believed the plan to be politically unfeasible at the time, however if a bill establishing it reached her desk, she would sign it into law.

Since then, she has shifted to assailing the policy on its merits.

“We don’t have one size fits all; our country is quite diverse. What works in New York City won’t work in Albuquerque,” she told an assorted audience of 20,000 employees of the electronic health records industry on February 26, 2014; the speech earned her $225,500.

These words were later cited by business lobbyists in New York state earlier this year to argue that if even Hillary Clinton opposed single-payer, why should New York adopt it?

Hillary Clinton’s paid speech circuit came to an end as her campaign revved up. But for her husband, with whom she shares a bank account, it hasn’t. This summer, he was the keynote speaker at America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the industry group that poured almost $100 million into trying to defeat health care reforms during the fight over the Affordable Care Act.

As part of her newly found opposition to single-payer on the merits, Hillary Clinton’s attacks on Sanders’ health care plan mischaracterize what he is proposing. For example, she has claimed that his plan, which relies on states to administer the single-payer plan, would turn “over your and my health insurance to governors.”

Warren Gunnels, the policy director of Sanders’ campaign, told The Week that actually this is not the case. If a governor chose not to participate, “citizens would receive coverage from the feds.” It’s actually the Clinton-backed status quo under the Affordable Care Act that is allowing governors to pick and choose who to cover.


https://theintercept.com/2016/01/13/hillary-clinton-single-payer/


So what's your take, was Hillary Clinton's shift from supporting single payer healthcare influenced by the funds she received from the health industry, or did her position change have no relation to the money that the insurance companies payed her (and her husband)?

It's probably b/c she saw how difficult it was just to get the ACA passed and how Hillarycare failed in the 90s. She became more politically aware...why is that a bad thing?

So no, I don't think the money had a significant impact on her stance.

Sorry i recently moved on my choice (i chose H.) because i think i have the choice, im not a pig, it's wonderfull to feel so independant.
Hilary got millions for few speeches at health industry, but doesnt influence her, im sure...Vouch.

On thing is for sure, if we drop the profit motive from health insurance, our health care cost as a portion of our GDP and our health care costs per capita goes down drastically. The health care can be for profit.

ACA did a lot to level the playing field and there are more Americans insured than ever. Health care just costs so much because the services are artificially inflated due to reimbursement systems and how they game the payers and the service providers.

Is HRC going to protect private capitalists interest and administer any crisis with their advantage to the detriment of the American people? Of course she is, but no politician can be trusted with this.

Cept Bernie His impact in American politics is YUGE. Now there is a very real New Deal movement taking root. And American needs a New Deal. Bernie is just paving the way for the second coming of FDR: Elizabeth Warren.

This post was edited by Skinned on Apr 19 2016 05:01am

I know it's likely not a large portion of national healthcare by itself, but my favorite case study is pharmaceutical development. Your average pharmaceutical company's budget for developing a revolutionary drug goes something like

400 billion "opportunity cost"
40 billion advertising
10 billion R&D

It doesn't cost near as much as they claim to develop a life saving drug even when you consider all the failed drugs that get tossed out along the way. I mean, it's still billions, but the actual revenue from the drug far exceeds it's cost by such a drastic margin that they have to inflate the development cost so the public doesn't revolt over how much leaching the company does.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Apr 19 2016 09:26am

This may be the simple explanation for why overall medical care in US is 2x more expensive than in Canada.

Agree with first point, disagree with second point. Don't underestimate the power of money.



I'm not sure I'm ready to give Warren the FDR mantle.

She's okay. She supposedly champions fighting financial corruption.

But even though Bernie's message matches her biggest spiel, she has yet to endorse him. Probably scared of HRC, she's trying to play both sides of them even though their biggest differences are on financial corruption.

And I don't know. The way she reacts to attacks and criticism just seems really childish. I don't think she is presidential material yet, let alone the next FDR.

I see people saying Bernie is opening up the door for Warren all the time, but I just don't see it. She's 66, already getting older. If HRC is elected and reelected she will be like 74 by the next time she can run.

And she's not as special of a politician as Bernie. An establishment candidate can't just come in and repeat what Bernie has done in 2016. He's an independent progressive with the most consistently progressive voting record in the Senate. Warren is no Sanders, and she is definitely no FDR.

Warren has the ability to put action to her words. Bernie is all talk and an unskilled politician which is essential to accomplish anything.

His recent decision to go ham against Hillary and the Dem party shows how unprepared he is to accomplish anything he talks about.

You don't make enemies with people that mostly agree with you when half of the country is already strongly opposed to everything you want.

There is a strong possibility that Warren becomes the leftist hero that so many are mistakenly believing that Bernie is.

Warren also made the right decision to stay neutral which shows how much more prepared she is to accomplish things.

She values the cause more than the candidate and she thus far has shown to be a very powerful force for the left.

Bernie is currently harming the cause and the party by letting his ego interfere with his strategy

Like I said, Warren will be like 74 when she runs for president if Hillary is reelected.

Which isn't exactly too old, but it isn't ideal, and it is hard for me to see someone so old as the future of a major political party.

And as for Bernie's age, I think Bernie's ideas represent the future of the Democratic party, but it is also difficult for someone like him to be labeled as the future of the party himself just because he likely won't be in politics for another decade.

Now, if Warren was some 50 year old whippersnapper, I'd have more time believing she could be the face of the Democratic party for years to come and usher in new pratical and progressive agendas.

But I just don't see it with her, or Bernie, for various reasons.

Bernie excited the young internet crowd that scream unfair and bias when Bernie fails to provide realistic solutions to problems he diagnoses, the young internet crowd that are going ham with sexism and claims of corruption without evidence

Bernie appears to be a good man with good intentions and a record that I have respect for but he isn't ready for this.

He isn't a strong leader or the type of politician that can or will achieve anything.

We live in a fast food generation where everything is what I want when I want but what the young fail to realize is that politics are very much the same as they have always been a slow drawn out process for progress.

My suggestion would be for him to finish out his run strong and with dignity while encouraging his supporters to stop making half of the Dems look as bad as Trump supporters

You want to head left? get people out to vote in all elections. If more of this country voted you might be surprised how far left we would be right now