Health Care for America and the Presidential Candidates' Health Care Plans

In the News

NPR, All Things Considered
Parsing Democratic Health Care Plans [1]

All three plans (Obama's, Clinton's and Edwards') came from the same source: Yale University political science professor name Jacob Hacker. And all three were based on the concept of something called "shared responsibility," where government, individuals and employers all pay something. . . . So, Clinton and Obama would let people keep their existing coverage if they want to, or buy into a government-sponsored plan like Medicare, and the government would subsidize small businesses and the poor.

The New York Times
Where the Democrats Stand on Health Care [2]

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, say they would require all Americans to get coverage and would provide subsidies to that end, while Senator Barack Obama of Illinois would require only children to have coverage. Mr. Obama's plan would require employers to provide coverage or contribute to a new public program. They have all mulled expanding the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

On the Blogs

Roger Hickey | OurFuture.Org
Real Health Care Solutions [3]

"The 2008 election campaign is almost sure to be a health care election — even before we've done much organizing at all," said America's Future co-director Roger Hickey at a conference sponsored by New Jersey Citizen Action on November 13. "So imagine what will happen once we get going." In this keynote speech at the "Conference on Health Care for All: Real Solutions for New Jersey and the Nation" in New Brunswick, N.J., Hickey outlines what he sees as possible.

Ezra Klein | The American Prospect
The Hacker Plan [4]

It's a simple, elegant mechanism for coverage, requiring none of the complex market restructuring and odd coverage schemes of the plans that seek to preserve the private insurance market as a protected whole. Its secondary virtue is that it offers an easy, potential path to effective single-payer, allowing the government insurer to compete with private insurers, and possibly out compete them as well.

Saul Friedman | Watchdog Blog
Is Too Much of the Press 'Sicko'? [5]

John Edwards was the first to propose a universal system with a combination of public and private financing; every other candidate followed. Sen. Hillary Clinton has been the most reluctant to commit to Medicare for All, but her position is evolving. Most prominently, Sen. Barack Obama's far-reaching public-private proposal, which is mostly public, is close to that of Yale's Jacob S. Hacker, whose plan is called "Health Care For America." And Hacker, among other advocates, has endorsed Obama's plan.

Jonathan Cohn | The New Republic
The Mulligan [6]

None of this makes Clinton unique among her rivals. Both Edwards, who unveiled his plan in February, and Obama, who introduced his in May, offer essentially the same deal to the insured-- allowing them to keep their coverage while the government constructs and oversees a new system for everyone else. Both Edwards and Obama also have public insurance options that open a door to single-payer--a model that bears the intellectual fingerprints of Yale professor and sometime tnr contributor Jacob Hacker, who has met with all three campaigns.

Dean Baker | Truthout
Edwards Comes Out on Top on the Economy [7]

All three contenders have proposed a national health care system that is a variant of the plan developed by Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker. The basics of the plan are to require that all firms either insure their workers directly or pay a fee to the government. The government then uses this money to heavily subsidize insurance for low - and moderate-income families. It also establishes an expanded Medicare-type public plan that people will have the option to buy into. In addition, it reforms the private insurance market, most importantly by requiring that insurers not discriminate based on pre-existing conditions.

Jcullen | Daily Kos
Go for Gold on Health Care [8]

The health care reforms proposed by Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama satisfy the main points of Health Care for America, which the progressive Campaign for America's Future drew up with the assistance of Yale Professor Jacob Hacker as part of the Agenda for Shared Prosperity (sharedprosperity.org).

Michelle Cottie, Christopher Orr, Jason Zengerle and the TNR Staff | The New Republic
So, About That 15 Million Figure You've Been Hearing... [9]

Holohan, too, told me that auto enrollment might help bump up the participation, though he couldn't say by how much. Jacob Hacker, a Yale University political scientist (and occasional TNR contributor) who has also been working with all three campaigns, concurred.

Employee Benefits Adviser | The Benefits Place
Preview of Clinton Health Plan [10]

"They want to make sure it's affordable," said Jacob Hacker, Yale professor and advisor to Ms. Clinton. "It's a fairly artful plan [aiming to] build on the existing system where it works and replace it where it doesn't work. You can't, as an employer, say 'I'm not going to do anything.' You can't offer benefits that are so inadequate that they don't protect your workers."

Roger Hickey | OurFuture.Org
Health Care for America [11] 

The great debate over how to fix our broken health care system just got a lot more interesting. Today, the Economic Policy Institute released the Health Care for America plan – a simple yet sophisticated approach crafted by Jacob Hacker, author of "The Great Risk Shift." Health Care for America, which you can find at [12]www.sharedprosperity.org [13].

My organization, Campaign for America's Future, will be launching a nationwide effort to discuss and debate how to get good healthcare coverage for all Americans while controlling spiraling health care costs. The best way to start that debate is to put a simple, clear and progressive health care plan on the table. Health Care for America is that plan, and it will be a benchmark by which all other plans can be judged. 

How? By creating a Medicare-style system for all Americans under 65. The uninsured and underinsured could buy into the Health Care for America plan, with federal or state government assistance if necessary. Medicare and Health Care for America would then join forces and wield enormous bargaining power, driving down costs and raising the bar on quality.

Workers could still be covered by insurance provided by their private employers. Further, employers who did not want to shoulder the burden of providing coverage as good as Health Care for America could instead enroll their workers into Health Care for America at a modest cost. They would have to do one or the other, which would make sure that affordable, quality health coverage would be guaranteed for all Americans.