Obama vs. Clinton: Iraq, Healthcare, & Go Vote Tomorrow!

Super Tuesday is tomorrow. We may know by nighttime who our next president will.. I mean, our next Dem candidate will be.

On the pre-invasion Iraq votes, & future Iraq plans, in their own words:


[From Friday's debate, Hillary explaining the issue of her "judgment" on voting to allow Bush's invasion of Iraq]


[a very sleepy account, Obama tooting his own horn, (sleepily), on his foresight in voting against Bush's invasion of Iraq]

Pamela Leavey's article on "The Clinton-Obama Iraq Feud" argues that despite all the hoopla about Obama's pre-war vote, after the war began, Obama did little to "back up his call" and his voting record is as Democratic centrist as hers. Maybe (or maybe not) we're focusing too much on blamegame of the past: who has a more solid plan for the future withdrawal and stabilizing of Iraq?? You can read and decide for yourself at their campaigns' websites here,
* Hillary Clinton’s Plan to End the War in Iraq as President
* Obama’s Plan for Ending the War in Iraq

Healthcare, damnit, who'll realistically get us to better, Universal coverage?

First off, the well-respected Commonwealth Fund, in a January 15th article, "Envisioning the Future: The 2008 Presidential Candidates' Health Reform Proposals," confirmed my, and for-all-practical-purposes everyone's unanimous hunch that the Republicans (except maybe Romney, who pushed through Massachusetts's' universal health coverage) are kooks in terms of understanding how to improve healthcare, and in contrast the report concludes,

the mixed private–public group insurance with a shared responsibility for financing proposed by the leading Democratic candidates and the public insurance reform proposals put forward by Kucinich have the greatest potential to move the health care system toward high performance... [these plans] have the potential to provide everyone with comprehensive and affordable health insurance, achieve greater equity in access to care, realize efficiencies and cost savings in the provision of coverage and delivery of care, and redirect incentives to improve quality.

Since the lovable little Kucinich is out of the race, you can compare the detail differences of Hillary vs. Barack plans in this exceptional Commonwealth Fund chart.

In this sloppy article, Jacqueline Fox makes the same points that other Obama supporters have made: that Clinton's " mandate would be meaningless in practice.. [because] she’s proposed no enforcement mechanism"; that both successfully propose expanding Medicaid & S-CHIP, cost control, affordability and subsidies; that somehow, "there’s good reason to expect Obama’s plan will cover more people more quickly." (article doesn't elaborate on why Clinton's plan is inferior on this front). What I don't get is the simplifying characterization (made by many writers like Fox and even Obama himself) that Hillary's plan forces people to buy their currently unaffordable insurance--the way I understand it, it is obvious that she also couples the mandate with other measures to make healthcare more affordable. Somehow characterizing her mandate as "callous," I believe is misguided, and throws off the discussion from the real issue of Whether the mandate get us to better & universal healthcare.

In a very readable analysis that is as well-researched, organized, and articulate as any I've seen about healthcare and the Clinton v. Obama debate, Abhas Gupta concludes:

Like I said before, both candidates' plans are very similar, yet I am inclined to more strongly support Senator Obama's plan. I firmly believe that greater private competition in a public-defined playing field is what's needed to improve our health care system--the Obama plan's National Health Insurance Exchange most closely captures this sentiment. I also strongly oppose a mandate as a matter of principle, but more importantly, because we are likely facing a recession and a mandate would only serve to exacerbate our economic troubles.

Definitely read over his short article to realistically understand more about the issues facing healthcare, and the facts and figures beyond all the political mumbo-jumbo these days.

Lastly, here's an issue and viewpoint cautioning Obama's rhetoric regarding healthcare that has surfaced in the past few days. Ezra Klein points out:

Obama not only has a mandate for kids in his own health care plan -- what if the parents can't pay, one might ask? -- but he said, in last night's debate, "If people are gaming the system, there are ways we can address that. By, for example, making them pay some of the back premiums for not having gotten it in the first place." That, of course, is exactly what a mandate does. Gaming the system, in this context, means not purchasing health care. And Obama is now threatening to force them to pay back premiums. That's a harsher penalty than anything Clinton has proposed.

Also, Klein believes that while Obama's campaign has recently sent out mailings stating that "Hillary's healthcare plan forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it," Klein guesses that Obama's healthcare plan, if he's elected president, will eventually need to be reformed to include a mandate (in Gupta's article: "Obama's advisers have stated that a mandate may be a possibility later when health care costs can be controlled."), and so he's shooting himself in the foot right now with his mandate-slandering.

...he's decided to respond to the inadequacies of his own policy by fear-mongering against not only better policy, but the type of policy he's probably going to have to eventually adopt. It's very, very short-sighted.

As for tomorrow...

Go vote! I missed all but the last 5 minutes of the SuperBowl, so maybe I'll get some buffalo wings as I watch tomorrow's anticipated results come in...