Jeff Cohen: Will Health Care Timidity Trip Up Hillary Clinton?

[marmar]

from CommonDreams:


Published on Friday, February 2, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Will Healthcare Timidity Trip Up Hillary Clinton?
by Jeff Cohen

It’s conventional wisdom that if Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign falters with Democratic activists in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, it will be over the issue of the Iraq war. And her vacillations on the war.

Yet the dividing-line issue in the upcoming primaries may turn out to be not Iraq, but healthcare. And just like on Iraq, the Democratic base is in no mood for timidity and half-way measures and vague rhetoric. Most rank-and-file Democrats support government-provided national health insurance: enhanced Medicare for All.

And that’s no secret to the candidates. This is how the Washington Post described Hillary Clinton’s recent, maiden voyage into Iowa as a candidate:

In keeping with her expressed desire to hold a “conversation with Iowans,” Clinton asked at one point for a show of hands from the audience, asking them to declare whether they preferred an employer-based system of insurance, a system that mandates all individuals to purchase insurance, with help from the government if necessary, or one modeled on the Medicare system. Overwhelmingly the audience favored moving toward a Medicare-like system for all Americans.
A show of hands in almost any roomful of Democratic activists will produce the same result: they want a single-payer “Medicare-like system for all Americans.” According to the Post, Clinton told the Iowa group: “I’m not ready to be specific until I hear from people.”

Pressure from the base on Clinton and other Democratic contenders to get specific will intensify in the early states -- mobilized by groups such as Progressive Democrats of America, Healthcare Now, National Nurses Organizing Committee and Physicians for a National Healthcare Program. So far, none of the sitting Senators seeking the nomination are supporting Medicare for All, though former Sen. John Edwards may be coming close. Rep. Dennis Kucinich for years has been a leading supporter in the House. ......(more)

The rest of the article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0202-29.htm

[Captain Hilts]

1. Will voting in favor of tort reform trip up Obama? Let's wait and see. nt