Obama vs. Clinton: strong endorsements to each healthplan, for differing reasons

If you're reading at 12:13am the day of casting your Super Tues. ballot, you are a very pragmatic shopper or procrastinator. Here is an endorsement each for ClintonCare (unfortunately, this weakly made argument is the best one I could find) and ObamaCare.

• Significantly, this has been the "most-emailed" NYTimes article today: Paul Krugman's ClintonCare endorsement: "new estimates say that a plan resembling Mrs. Clinton’s would cover almost twice as many of those now uninsured as a plan resembling Mr. Obama’s — at only slightly higher cost." He even spits at you these staggering numbers!: [a plan resembling Obama's] "would cover 23 million of those currently uninsured, at a taxpayer cost of $102 billion per year... An otherwise identical plan with mandates would cover 45 million of the uninsured — essentially everyone — at a taxpayer cost of $124 billion. Over all, the Obama-type plan would cost $4,400 per newly insured person, the Clinton-type plan only $2,700."
  
  Paul Krugman is a tricky fellow, though. The "new estimates" that he bases these shocking estimates come solely from a paper by respected economist Jonathan Gruber of M.I.T. However, note all the "plan resembling" and "Obama-type" and "Clinton-type" phraseology employed by Krugman. Obviously, the average reader (I missed his rhetorical slight-of-hand on the first read, and was convincingly shocked, the effect Krugman was no doubt going for) with little time (fortunately though, I am as of now sadly unemployed!) would have glossed over these. However, Gruber's paper does not specify Clinton or Obama's plans, and as for his simulation of a plan with or w/out mandates (which Clinton has), those numbers are based on the assumption "that 95% of those who would not voluntarily choose to insure" indeed become insured through the mandate." Harold Pinter's critique of Krugman's article points out, though, that the Massachusettes Universal mandate has so far enrolled just over 50% of its previously uninsured.
  

• Miles Mogulescu has been writing a series since October 10th entitled, "Why Not Single Payer," advocating for Single-Payer/Medicare for All, and has been blasting both Clinton and Obama (and previously, Edwards) for moderating, having no guts/foresight, incorporating the terrible private-insurance fiasco we currently have into their future plans, and for dropping the true universal healthcare policy that will also provide better medical care like an emberrassing step-child. In today's lukewarm endorsement of ObamaCare over ClintonCare, 2 points he makes resonate with me, especially the latter:
  1) ObamaCare will be "easier to run on against the Republicans in the fall, and to potentially gain enough popular support to get through Congress without too many crippling compromises." He explains,

  Here's what the Republicans will be saying in the fall: "If you're an uninsured family making over $40-$50,000 a year so you aren't poor enough for subsidies but can't afford insurance, Hillary will garnishee thousands of dollars of your wages since the average policy for a family of 4 is around $12,000." That should be enough to scare off millions of middle class families earning less than $100,000, and make them think twice about voting for a Democrat. The growing failure of Romney's Massachusetts plan will give ample evidence to back these Republican charges.

  2) He prefaces his endorsement of Obama as the closer-choice-to-"Medicare for All"-candidate with the pointed rebuke,

  Despite Obama's political calculation to the contrary, the combination of a President with Obama's extraordinary leadership skills and a budding mass movement already supporting [Medicare for All Bill] HR 676 (which includes over 235 union organizations in 40 states, including 60 Central Labor Councils, as well as many citizens and religious organizations) the American people can be convinced to support Medicare For All.

  He goes on to praise that under Obama as opposed to Clinton, the grassroots movement towards Medicare for All will gain even more momentum; if a state like CA tries to enact single-payer in their own state, Obama will be more likely not to block it; and lastly,
  

  Maybe I'm being naïve, but, in the long-run, the fact that Obama understands single payer and is not hostile to it as a concept, gives me hope that we might get there, or close to there, over the course of an 8 year Obama Presidency... A mass movement for single payer healthcare has already begun to take shape. My hope is that an Obama Presidency will help give it the space to flourish, and to push Universal Healthcare beyond the bounds of Obama's more modest proposals.

  Personally, as I stated before, I believe we as a country need single-payer/government/"Medicare for All"--whichever you want to call it--coverage, and Mogulescu's series, "Why Not Single Payer," as with other articles, conversations, books, reports, health care experiences, and observations I've come across, indeed convinces me so.