HillaryCare II addresses real crisis

Back in 1993 when Hillary Clinton decided health care reform had to be her way or the highway, the criticism of universal coverage wiped out her efforts.

Fourteen years have passed since conservatives railed against the disaster they said universal health care would wreak on the medical system. Alarms were attached to the "socialism" banner, warning that if Clinton's plan passed it would create a system under which you'd have no real time with your doctor and where others would be making decisions best left to you and your physician.

Sounds a whole lot like what we've got now, don't it?

Replace "government" with "HMO" and the warnings have come true without much attempt at reform. And that's for the people with insurance.

Those who immediately jerked their knees to kick Clinton's announced health care reform plan last Monday must not have aging sick parents or kids with chronic illness under their watch. They must live a life where an annual cholesterol check is the closest they get to the fiasco that is the modern medical system.

Two pregnancies that were forced into C-sections thanks to defensive medicine, a toddler whose bout with a day-care illness is leading to a lifetime of asthma, and a fall off a ladder have left me with the belief that it cannot get any worse.

Say what you will about 1993. Clinton made a terrible mistake by failing to compromise and by letting her agenda get in the way of the reform itself. Her plan was too unwieldy to gain support across the aisle, or even among many Capitol Hill Democrats.

But Clinton is a different politician now. A hallmark of her Senate service is her ability to reach out and work with Republican senators.

Conservatives say Clinton is the best motivator for Republican voters. Polls show half of the country has a negative opinion of the former first lady.

But health care in 1993 didn't bury her, and reminding people today of her failure then just leads more people to wish she had succeeded.

All of the major Democratic presidential candidates have unveiled some form of universal health care. John Edwards' plan goes the farthest and raises taxes on the wealthiest Americans to pay for it.

Clinton has simplified her new health care proposal from the one that went down in flames in 1993. Still, conservatives attacked it. This paper's lead editorial Tuesday about Clinton's new plan lambasted it for proposing what already occurs without it.

The well-honed free market system we've got sounds a whole lot like what the editorial bemoaned about HillaryCare II.

"But is the pursuit of 'simpler' state-run bureaucratic compulsion -- telling doctors and hospitals to spend less money, deciding which sick people go to the front of the line and which to the back -- really the answer?"

It's not a good answer whether government or the insurance industry is making it happen. Either way the patient with insurance is screwed. Just think where that leaves the 51 million Americans without it.

In Nevada, roughly one-fifth of the population has no insurance.

Clinton wants to insure them all. Call it a government mandate, but who out there without insurance would reject it simply because someone provided it?

In a past column, I detailed the insanity of being told my ambulance ride to the trauma center wasn't covered because I "chose" an out-of-network carrier.

Here's a new one. The doctors that made rounds to my daughter's room while she was hospitalized earlier this year aren't covered because they, too, are out of the network.

It made no difference that her doctor called an ambulance to take her to the hospital.

It made no difference that the ambulance in that case was in network or that the hospital was or that her doctor was.

When a different doctor came in to listen to her lungs and heartbeat in the evening on a holiday weekend, I was at fault.

I suppose I should have unhooked my daughter from the oxygen, discharged her and drove her back to the pediatrician's office.

That's another of my "appeals" with the insurer.

So how is it that it gets any worse if more people have insurance? It's got to be a lot cheaper to treat the common cold at a doctor's office than in the ER.

Clinton says she's learned from her mistakes, and none could have been as big or bruising as the health care debacle in 1993.

She'll have her chance soon enough to prove whether her plan can draw crossover votes. There sure aren't any Republican candidates with a plan to reform health care. Rudy Giuliani's Web site doesn't even mention the issue.

Mitt Romney, the once-proud father of universal health care in Massachusetts, now says Democrats forced him to do it.

Good. Americans know there's a crisis, now they know who they can turn to for real solutions. Bogus arguments against Clinton's plan -- ostensibly because she's Clinton -- only reinforce what the average middle American already knows to be true.

And since every attack reminds people of the 1993 plans' failure, they certainly can't blame her for the mess we're in now.

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In Thursday's column I should have been more clear about Wayne Allyn Root's past stated interest in running for the U.S. Senate. He says he would never have run against John Ensign, only for Ensign's seat if the senator vacated it.

Erin Neff's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at (702) 387-2906, or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.