"To achieve universal coverage, instead of Mr. Clinton’s plan to require employers to provide it, Mr. Obama envisions creating a government-run health plan that would compete with private insurers.
Mr. Clinton said that as he looked at the matter in 1993 he believed that he had two options for providing universal coverage: either a tax increase or an employer mandate. Since he had already expended a lot of political capital on a deficit-reduction plan that included tax increases as well as spending cuts, he said he had to rely on the employer mandate.
“If you had an employer mandate, then you could leave the small businesses out or come up with enough revenues to subsidize the smaller employers — and since we couldn’t raise taxes, having an employer mandate guaranteed that the National Federation of Independent Businesses would join with the insurance companies,” he said. “Now they don’t have to have an employer mandate, because they can offer buy-ins. I hope they won’t give up on this public option.”
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