Clinton to unveil $110b healthcare plan
 Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) will unveil today a "sweeping" universal healthcare plan requiring everyone to have health insurance and offering federal subsidies to help reduce the cost.
At its heart, "American Health Choices Plan" follows the model by US states to require auto insurance -- "individual mandate," combined with government assistance. It would cost $110 billion per year, comparable in per-year cost to the war in Iraq.
"It puts the consumer in the driver's seat by offering more choices and lowering costs," Neera Tanden, Clinton's top policy adviser, told The Associated Press. "If you like the plan you have, you keep it. If you're one of tens of millions of Americans without coverage or don't like the coverage you have, you will have a choice of plans to pick from and you'll get tax credits to help pay for it."
Healthcare has become a major focus of the 2008 campaign. A recent study found that the costs of healthcare are rising twice as fast as wages in the United States. Some 47 million Americans are uninsured.
"Clinton's plan builds on the existing employer-based system of coverage," AP explained. "People who receive insurance through the workplace could continue to do so; businesses, in turn, would be required to offer insurance to employees, or contribute to a government-run pool that would help pay for those not covered. Clinton would also offer a tax subsidy to small businesses to help them afford the cost of providing coverage to their workers."
"For individuals and families who are not covered by employers or whose employer-based coverage is inadequate, Clinton would offer expanded versions of two existing government programs: Medicare, and the health insurance plan currently offered to federal employees," AP continues. "Consumers could choose between either government-run program, but aides stress that no new federal bureaucracy would be created under the Clinton plan."
"Aides said Clinton will propose several specific measures to pay for her plan, including an end to some of the Bush-era tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 per year," AP added. "Edwards has vowed to completely repeal the tax cuts for high earners to pay for the cost of his plan, estimated at $90 billion-$120 billion per year, while Obama would pay for his plan in part by letting the tax cuts expire in 2010."
FULL AP STORY HERE.
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