Evidence of the nation-state’s continual right-ward drift
Something popped out to me from the New Republic cover-article concerning “Hillary-land”, Hillary Clinton’s Political machine.
The newest senior staffer in Hillaryland, Rubiner came to Hillary by way of former Republican Senators John Chafee and Bob Dole and, most recently, the aggressively centrist New America Foundation, where she ran a program on universal health insurance. Her hiring says a lot about where Hillary is headed on the issues that may define a presidential campaign. Rubiner favors a universal plan, whereby the government mandates the purchase of health insurance, just as it does car insurance, from competing private providers, while subsidizing the neediest. Back in the ’90s, this was the centrist alternative to Hillarycare, and it was sponsored by Rubiner’s ex-bosses, Chafee and Dole.
“Truman’s dream of Universal Health Care”, indeed. Hillary Clinton’s new position on health care is her partisan opponents’ old position on health care. It is funny how that works. Ah well. The old Clinton Health Care Bill looks to me like a bureaucracy – shifter anyways — what’s the line about it being basically written by the 5 largest Insurance companies and thus being vehementally opposed by all the other Insurance companies? Or the more commonly heard in the country, as we moved onto the “Gingrich Revolution” — “The Government is going to take control of one sixth of the US Economy!” I remember Conan O’Brien, when he had Bob Dole on his show at the time, did a funny bit where he “zeroed in” on Dole’s chart of how complicated the bill was to show it was “padded” with the “National Basketball Association”.