Hillary seems to be ignoring the democratic base as she triangulates, yet again, against universal health care. Jim Newell at Slate writes that Hillary is acting over confident and is triangulating ahead of the general election throwing progressive policy out the window for political expediency. We know how that ended for her in 2008.







The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign has begun using an odd new line of attack against upstart Democratic primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders: He’s too liberal on taxes and universal health insurance. Why is she doing this? After returning to the position in which she entered the race—as the near-certain nominee—she seems to be setting herself up for the general election. But it’s strange to see her now, after the previously shaky ship has been steadied, attacking a candidate whose supporters she’ll need in any general election campaign over an issue that his supporters care about very deeply.





She’s sounding like the republican Clown Car as she rails against any taxes at all to pay for single payer, completely neglecting to say that not having to pay for any health insurance at all more than makes up for a small tax for the single payer program.







A standard Democratic presidential nominee representing the center-left of the party might call a single-payer system politically impractical in order to argue against it. “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system,” Sen. Barack Obama said during his 2008 presidential campaign, for example. He then explained why he wouldn’t pursue such a model: “People don’t have time to wait. They need relief now. So my attitude is let’s build up the system we got. Let’s make it more efficient. We may be over time—as we make the system more efficient and everybody’s covered—decide that there are other ways for us to provide care more effectively.” In the end that approach resulted in the Affordable Care Act, compromise legislation that greatly expanded coverage without really overhauling the country’s private health insurance model. But Obama didn’t really disown the idea of single-payer, which many progressives still prefer to the current system.

Clinton, however, is going much further by appropriating one of the right’s central talking points against government-funded universal health insurance: Think of the taxes! She’s not just saying that a single-payer system is a political nonstarter with conservatives. She’s reciting the actual conservative talking point that would make a single-payer system a political nonstarter.



Bernie Sanders issued a statement regarding Clinton’s attack on universal health care:

During the CBS Democratic debate on Saturday, November 14, 2015, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to use the tragedy of 9/11 as a political excuse for her coziness with Wall Street interests, including the millions she has received in Wall Street campaign funding over her career. That defense of the Clinton campaign’s corporate fundraising has been widely assailed in the media and on social media. In an attempt to divert the public’s gaze from Wall Street coziness, the Clinton campaign has launched a false attack on universal health care – something she has previously supported. The Clinton campaign received more contributions from the pharmaceutical industry than any other – Republican or Democrat – through the first six months of the campaign. So, what is this false attack really all about: either Secretary Hillary Clinton is repudiating years of advocating for universal health or she’s playing politics with the health of America’s families.











