The New York Times, whose editors endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, recently published an interesting op-ed strongly favoring Clinton’s health care plan over Obama’s. I think the article’s greatest failing is that it seems to imply that Clinton’s plan is affordable. In reality the Obama and Clinton plans, if enacted as proposed, would send us many times deeper into debt than the war in Iraq has. This is because just offering a “national Health Care Plan,” whether publicly or privately owned, is not the same as fixing the problems in our health care system. Providing care for everyone is really important, but expanding access will not address the major issues that make US health care wasteful and ineffective (e.g. focus of funding and research on late stage chronic diseases, misaligned cost incentives for practitioners, poor/non-existent organization of medical teams and information, etc.).
When I began researching presidential candidates, I thought health care would be my top issue, but sadly all of the candidates are being more pragmatic (in terms of getting elected) than visionary on this issue. Obama or Clinton health plans would continue to fund health care by mortgaging the nation, and hoping that my generation will be able to pay it off. The NYT op-ed argues that Clinton’s plan is much more affordable than Obama’s, but the difference is a pittance relative to the total sum we will spend if our current system is forced to accommodate the baby boomer demographic as they age. Both plans would solve the issue of access fairly well. Neither would begin to address the looming financial crisis.
I’m going to base my voting decision on these candidate’s more substantive differences, like fund raising ethics, propensity to bridging dogmatic/party devisions, and the way they inspire ordinary people to do extraordinary things. No current Presidential candidate will create a sound and sustainable health care system, unlesss We demand it of them. However, a certain kind of President is more likely to help us in our work towards a sustainable health system and economy (not accepting money from lobbyists = less beholden to fiscal stakeholders that oppose reform, less partisan = less political gridlock, inspiring average Joe = better for the grass-roots efforts that will be needed to fix health care).
I’m voting for Barack Obama. I think he will move our country in the right direction, even though his platform, as it stands, would not solve our health care financial crisis. The prospect of tens of trillions in unfunded Medicare/Medicaid liability still scares me terribly, so I’m working with the Archimedes Movement instead of pretending that any of the current presidential plans is sufficient. I think Clinton is a stronger candidate than we’ve had in a while (at least since the last Clinton), Obama is a whole lot more exciting, but when it comes to health care, We Can Still Do Better.
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