Hillary Clinton gave a long interview today on the exact make-up of her health care plan. In it, she says, as her advisers have before her, that she'd cap the family spending at somewhere between 5% and 10% of income. Assume, given the numbers involved, that we're looking at something closer to 10%, though low-income families will be fully subsidized. Other parts of the interview, including Clinton's statement that she'd have a "bare-bones Medicare like system" for the public insurer, worried Jon Cohn. And rightfully so. Most folks don't really know this, but about 70% of Medicare users have some form of supplementary, private insurance -- and that number doesn't include the Part D prescription drug plans. So if she's planning to base the public plan directly off of Medicare, that won't be sufficient. But I sort of doubt that's exactly what she has in mind. Indeed, it's a little tricky to figure out how seriously to take the details here. The principles she's laid out -- an individual mandate, a public option, a regulated group market, etc -- are important. But Clinton has said, explicitly, that she will not send a bill to Congress. She would, instead, let them write a bill they felt could achieve passage, and she'd use her position in the White House to influence its eventual shape. That's almost certainly the right approach, and it's one I'd like to hear Obama explicitly echo. But it makes too much focus on the specific details of her bill a bit beside the point. There are things she'll fight for, like universality, as she's made them into core commitments. But insofar as the public plan goes, she'll probably take what Congress is willing to give her. Indeed, i any part of this worries me, it's that she needs to be selling the public portion much harder if she's to have any chance of preserving it in the congressional process. In any case, read her whole interview, as it's quite good, and she's got an explanation of the free rider problem that someone would read to Obama. When Clinton talks about policy, she's the best in the race. It's when she talks about Florida and Michigan that she loses me.
