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What Bill Clinton Didn't Tell You: In 2008, Hillarycare Was Just As 'Crazy' As Obamacare

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The writer Michael Kinsley once said that “a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” So it was when Bill Clinton pointed out earlier this week that Obamacare’s drastic premium hikes were “crazy.” But the aspiring First Gentleman neglected to mention that Hillary Clinton’s 2008 reform plan was just as “crazy” as Obamacare.

“You’ve got this crazy system,” said Bill, “where all of a sudden, 25 million more people have health care and then the people that are out there busting it—sometimes 60 hours a week—wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world.”

What Bill is referring to is the phenomenon of rate shock, especially for those who aren’t eligible for Obamacare’s subsidies. As we’ve extensively described at The Apothecary, rate shock is also a serious problem for people who are eligible for subsidies, but whose subsidies are too small to make up for rate shock: those with incomes above 250 percent of the Federal Poverty Line (incomes above $29,700 for a childless adult).

Hillarycare would have also caused rate shock

As a reminder, Obamacare’s rate shock is caused by the raft of regulations that the law imposes on the individual health insurance market. These regulations drive up the cost of the insurance that carriers can offer, making health coverage less affordable for millions of Americans.

Hillary’s health reform plan from 2008—technically released in September 2007—proposed a nearly identical raft of regulations, such as guaranteed issue (requiring insurers to cover all applicants, regardless of pre-existing conditions) and community rating (requiring that insurers charge identical rates to the poor and the sick, and similar rates to the old and the young). Both plans proposed the use of tax credits to subsidize coverage for some of the uninsured.

The principal difference between Hillarycare and Obamacare in 2008 was that Hillarycare included an individual mandate that forced Americans to buy this costlier insurance. Senator Obama’s original plan had no such feature. After Obama became President, he adopted the Hillarycare mandate. In other words, Obamacare became even more like Hillarycare in its final form.

If Hillary had won in 2008, and it had been her plan instead of Obama’s that became law in 2010, Hillarycare would be imposing exactly the same rate hikes as Obamacare has. People who are “out there busting it” would be paying just as much for health insurance as they do today. The next reporter on the campaign trail who sees Bill Clinton should ask him about that.

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INVESTORS’ NOTE: The biggest publicly-traded health insurance companies include UnitedHealth (NYSE:UNH), Anthem (NYSE:ANTM), Aetna (NYSE:AET), Molina (NYSE:MOH), and Centene (NYSE:CNC).

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