The plan released on Monday would cover 47 million uninsured Americans by rolling back some of the $54 billion in Bush administration tax cuts for families making more than $250,000 a year and by generating $56 billion in savings generated from streamlining health care bureaucracies. Her plan is praised by some because it does not employ a middle-class tax hike, new bureaucracy or place further burdens on small business owners.
The other half of annual cost for the "American Health Choices Plan" would come from savings that Clinton says she can squeeze from the current health- care system.
Currently 47 million Americans are without health insurance and 10 percent of the population is responsible for 70 percent of the cost the government pays.
Clinton said it was a new plan for new times. "This is not government-run. There will be no more bureaucracy."
"This plan expands personal choice and increases competition to keep costs down," she said.
Critics of the plan say if the plan didn't work 13 years ago why would it work now? Proponents say that it is a vastly different nation and more people don't have insurance. In addition more companies are not making healthcare standard.
Clinton's plan however would require everyone to enroll in their choice of a publicly funded or private coverage plan depending on income. Should someone become unemployed or lose their job provisions for "affordable" coverage would also be available.
She said, "Here in America people are dying because they couldn't get the care they needed when they were sick."
She continued, "It's time to provide quality affordable health care for every American, and I intend to be the president who accomplishes that goal, finally, for our country."
Her previous foray into universal health care system called by detractors as "socialized medicine" was killed as a government-run system by special interest groups, including the powerful pharmaceuticals lobby and the insurance industry as illustrated by Michael Moore's 2007 film Sicko.
"Obviously I've got a lot of experience in tackling this issue -- I've taken on all of these special interests for 15 years," Clinton said. So far two Republican presidential candidates have come out attacking her plan. Giuliani's campaign team said Senator Clinton's plan would mean more bureaucracy and expensive federal subsidies resulting in tax increases
Romney said "Hillarycare continues to be bad medicine" and claimed it was a plan for government insurance rather than private insurance. He even referred to it with an apparent air of distaste by calling it "European-style socialized medicine."
