Hillary's Toast Now

Is it just me, or is an AP story about your willingness to garnish peoples wages to force them into your health care plan not exactly the theme you want associated with your name going into Super Tuesday? My guess, people hear garnish and wages and don't really need to read anything else. If this takes off, she'll be playing defense for two days explaining the nuance.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans.

The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC's "This Week," she said: "I think there are a number of mechanisms" that are possible, including "going after people's wages, automatic enrollment."

Comments

[Fred Beloit]

Here is another great Clinton plan. Force workers, including the young, healthy, vigorous, but cash strapped, youngsters who are just starting their jobs, careers, businesses to buy health insurance they won't need. "Did you say they won't need? Are you crazy? How can you say that?"

I can say so because the insurance companies, who have an army-sized number of brilliant and highly-paid actuaries working for them, say so. Not only say so but bet on and invest huge sums of money on it.

Why should those least able to pay for and least at risk be forced to pay for insurance? Hillary is wrong for Americas.

[DonnaInMichigan]

Stick a fork in Hillary, she is done!!

[BobinStamford]

Funny how the people who are REALLY done are so eager to write-off others. Mission accomplished, patriots!

[Austin personal trainers]

"willing to garnish the wages of workers"

Nothing new here. Hillary: "We'll take your money for 'common good'"
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39205

[Protagonist]

Sorry, but isn't this what Mitt Romney did in Massachusetts, in not so many words?

The problem is that anyone with "wages" you can garnish isn't going to be problem as far as health insurance is concerned. Even if they rack up a $40,000 medical bill when having no health insurance (or inadequate health insurance, like what happened to my wife), the salaried class will be the first people to make payment arrangements when possible. The problem is people who just can't pay or won't pay, the moral obligation to help them out, and the free-rider problem in having a hospital that refuses to let people die on the streets.

The problem is not "health insurance" per say, but payment of medical debts. Pure and simple. The ideal system would be some kind of "Chapter 15" for "Medical Bankruptcy". If insolvency results due to high medical debts, the patient/debtor enters a protection scheme where the hospital has absolute first draw on all assets and income of the patient/debtor. This would encourage credit providers to make their customers get health insurance (probably provided from a subsidiary company) to protect the subordinate creditor's interests. Thus a large amount of the health bill payment process in this country would be controlled by the same entites who handle large consumer debt risk to begin with. If as many people had health insurance as had $10k in debt in consumer debt in this country, that would be near universal coverage. This would be a conservative/libertarian system, since bankruptcy is not a controversial role of government, and people who rack up debts (and let others rack up debts) would be liable.

The problem is that the political discourse on "healthcare" is as retarded as the discourse on immigration. Americans actually think they should be entitled to go to the hospital for major medical procedures performed by the brightest minds in western civilization, and not have to pay a dime for it. It would be a hard sell to mentioned "healthcare" and "bankruptcy" in the same system.

[Wahoo Willie Sez:]

Where the hell is boob when we need him? How does this affect Hilda's votes? The people "who can afford health insurance but wont buy it" aren't her base. Her people are the ones who make enough money (like boob, Chrissy and LameLLama) that giving up to 50% of their wages is perfectly fine it it helps the rest of the base. Those barely raising a family of four on inimum wage. This only affects the people in the middle who dont vote for demonrats. I wish Hilda had explained how much she would take from Boob's check. The amount he WOULD be normally paying for insurance, say $80-$200 or would it be more like his "fair share"? I'm just asking because I no longer recieve "wages" and presume I would no longer have to pay for insurance. So with Lama's hubby out there paying for it I want at least as good as I have.

[Yoda]

"Funny how the people who are REALLY done are so eager to write-off others."

Like you writing off Petraeus?

[Fred Beloit]

Boob, what are you doing here at 4:08pm? Shouldn't you be working? Don't honk off your boss. We need a big and bigger hunk of your salary to cover our every need. Ask Hillary. She knows. Thanks for your service.

[Fred Beloit]

"The overall portrait is of a lifelong, selfless do-gooder. The whole story is more complicated — and less flattering.

Clinton worked at the Children's Defense Fund for less than a year, and that's the only full-time job in the nonprofit sector she's ever had. She also worked briefly as a law professor.

Clinton spent the bulk of her career — 15 of those 35 years — at one of Arkansas' most prestigious corporate law firms, where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards."

[Fred Beloit]

Clinton's '35 years of change' omits most of her career
By Matt Stearns | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Sunday, February 3, 2008

[seekeronos]

The overall thing is, people generally do not like to forced to do something, i.e. "mandatory" health insurance.

...Unless, of course, we can be baited with a "gaining something for nothing" type thing, which in this world of entropy and decay, is more of a matter of the opposite:

Protecting your somethings from rotting into nothings.

Baiting folks with "free universal healthcare" while being very quite about who is actually going to pay for it (the dwindling middle class) has long been a socialist stratagem.