“I never thought that I would be arguing about the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare in the Democratic primary,” (Chelsea) Clinton said at an event in Manchester (NH). “Senator Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare and private insurance.”
She then went on to say that she believes her mother has a “more robust" record on health care than anyone else in the race.
That's two of the biggest lies told during the campaign so far (and getting to the lead past Donald Trump and Ted Cruz is quite a despicable accomplishment). Chelsea's just doing what her mother asked her to do, though.
"His plan would take Medicare and Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program [CHIP] and the Affordable Care Act health-care insurance and private employer health insurance and he would take that all together and send health insurance to the states, turning over your and my health insurance to governors," Hillary Clinton said Monday. "I don't believe number one we should be starting over. We had enough of a fight to get to the Affordable Care Act. So I don’t want to rip it up and start over."
She echoed the argument on Tuesday, the same day a Quinnapiac poll showed Sanders overtaking her in Iowa, 49 percent to 44 percent. Reiterating her claim that Sanders' plan would jeopardize the Affordable Care Act and effectively turn over health coverage programs to the states, many of them led by Republican governors, she said: "If that’s the kind of 'revolution' he's talking about, I'm worried, folks."
"I'm worried" at least is probably true. The rest is BS.
In a statement on Monday, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs hit back: "Secretary Clinton is inaccurate in suggesting that Republican governors would be able to circumvent the law and deny implementation in their states." Referring to a single-payer proposal he put forth in 2013, Briggs added: "The bill Sen. Sanders introduced was very clear. It is national legislation for all states."
National Nurses United added its voice to those defending Sanders' proposal, accusing Clinton of deliberately distorting the facts.
"Surely Hillary Clinton knows that Medicare and Medicaid are national programs, and that they would be funded as national programs," said NNU co-president Jean Ross. "To claim that expanding Medicare to all would hand it over to state governors is a crude, inflammatory distortion, and shows an indifference to all those people who continue to be harmed by a broken system."
Perhaps this foreshadows a line of attack Clinton will use in Sunday evening's debate. The Nil Admirari's satire doesn't fall far from the truth, does it?
'Medicare for all' is not dismantling Medicare. More truth: there is no place for for-profit health insurance companies in a single-payer world.
“So to answer your question: What I believe, is in comprehensive, universal health care for all people with a Medicare for all, single payer program. And when you do that, by the way, because you take private insurance companies out of the system, whose only function in life is to try and make as much profit as they can, when you control the costs of prescription drugs, you end up providing healthcare to all — comprehensive — and saving middle class families thousands of dollars a year. That’s why I believe in a Medicare-for-all system.”
Single-payer was too much for Obama to manage in 2009, so I feel certain Clinton isn't going to even give it a try. She got spanked once about it back in 1993, after all. That was millions and millions of dollars ago.
This is quite obviously the political revolution she should be worried about.
Update: Mediaite...
...(O)n CNN this afternoon, Jake Tapper confronted Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon over an angry statement Clinton made in 2008 when Barack Obama‘s campaign criticized her for her health care plan. She called it false and made these (interesting in hindsight) remarks:
“It is destructive, particularly for a Democrat, to be discrediting universal health care by waging a false campaign against my plan… It is undermining core Democratic principles. Since when do Democrats attack one another on universal health care?”
It appears 2016 Hillary Clinton has now answered her own question.
