Hillary Care coming to a state near you!

Mandatory universal health insurance, which was killed by Congress a decade ago when it was known as Hillary Care, is returning to a state near you, officials have confirmed. Only this time instead of a nationwide program instituted by Congress, state legislatures are setting up the requirements.

Laws already are on the books in Massachusetts. Vermont, Utah, Illinois and several other states are in some stage of looking at proposals to require that residents all prove they have health insurance – or face the potential of fines.

But concerns being raised involve the size of such programs, their funding and enforcement, and their complicated structure, just like those raised over Hillary Care.

And especially concerning to others is that in Massachusetts – viewed right now as the model for other states – there's no option for people who wish to manage their own health care and expenses, according to experts who assist consumers with just that type of accountability.

James Lansberry is vice president of operations for Samaritan Ministries, an Illinois organization that coordinates contributions from its thousands of members to cover all of their collective medical expenses each month.

Unlike for-profit insurance companies, Samaritan and several other similar organizations are more accurately described as cooperatives, where members join together with a commitment to pay for each other's medical needs.

He said the mandatory, universal health care will change a lot of things.

"This is completely radical, and is going to change the face of health care," Lansberry told WND, "especially for those of us who approach health care from a free market perspective."

He said his organization of Christians is very simple: members promise to help one another with medical expenses WITHOUT using insurance.

Needs are submitted and approved, expenses calculated, shares allocated and each member is notified about how much money to send which needy person. Payments typically run about $250 per month or less for a family – and Lansberry suggested that be compared to the common monthly family health insurance premiums of $800 or $1,000 or more.

This month, for example, the son of a group member in Michigan sought help when he broke his hand: the result was that Lansberry sent the Michigan family a small payment to help cover that expense.

"Most of our members are in the lower income brackets, below state poverty lines. We're actually providing a crutch for most state programs because these people are not taking part in Medicaid," he said. "They're doing this on their own."

First Lady Hillary Clinton and Surgeon General C. Everett Koop arguing for universal health care in the 1990s

In the 1990s, the idea of universal health care was called Hillary Care because Hillary Clinton orchestrated the assembly of a national universal health-care program that was promoted to the American people and proposed to Congress.

It would have assembled a complicated set of payment procedures for individuals and companies, and then mandated various coverage levels and circumstances. Congress ultimately rejected the proposal out of hand, saying it could not be repaired enough to make it workable.

However, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney just a few months ago signed into law the proposal from that state's Legislature launching a new mandatory universal health insurance program.

That specific program requires all uninsured adults to buy that insurance by July 1, 2007 – and prove it on their income tax returns – or face fines that could range into the thousands of dollars.

Maine and Hawaii both have made efforts to assure residents that insurance is available to them, and Illinois' program focuses on subsidies for low-income residents to increase their coverages.

Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, who signed into law a state universal health care program

But Massachusetts is the first to step into the area of making health insurance coverage a legal requirement.

Uwe Reinhardt, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, told The Washington Post that Massachusetts "is the first state in America to reach full adulthood.

"The rest of America is still in adolescence," he said.

Even though Massachusetts still has to create the rules and regulations under which the concept of "buy insurance or else" will be enforced, the concerns are evidence. Rev. Hurmon Hamilton, a minister in Boston, wondered who would be responsible for defining what is "affordable" under the accompanying mandatory payments for individuals and families.

The Christian groups also note that when Christians purchase group health insurance from a secular company, their premiums also are paying for abortions and other medical procedures that would violate their religious beliefs. In the Christian payment-sharing plans, abortions simply are not a covered procedure.

"Not one dollar of anyone's monthly gift goes to abortion," Lansberry told WND. "It's just practicing our religious convictions to take care of one another in a way that is consistent with the Bible."

"We believe Jesus Christ is the Ultimate Provider for all of life's needs. Individuals and families have the primary responsibility for their own health and decisions related to seeking health care. When they have burdens that are greater than they can bear, we firmly believe that the body of Christ, at the local church level first, and then in a broad corporate sense, should bear one another's burdens to fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2)," its website said.

Two other groups with similar services, and similar concerns, are Christian Care, of Florida, and Christian Brotherhood, of Ohio.

Howard Russell, of Christian Brotherhood, told WND his challenge now is to make sure lawmakers in every state know of his group, and the customers he has. "The challenge of alerting lawmakers is one of the big tasks that we have," he said.

Robert Baldwin, of Christian Care, said he was a little surprised, because he was expecting a return to national health care advocacy to be at the national level, when it arrived.

"We were kind of caught short, in that the state-by-state approach is much harder for us to stay on top of," he said.

His expectations may come true, too. There are reports Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has plans to introduce legislation in Congress soon to move the country closer to a national system. Wyden, who built a reputation for attacking centers that provide alternatives to abortion, apparently would propose a plan to collect taxes to pay for health care, then set up a system of government-run purchasing groups.

A church pastor in Illinois told WND that his parishioners are troubled by the plans – which are being implemented very quickly and very quietly.

Lansberry said his organization's subscribers in Massachusetts – and other states as more plans are adopted – will have to make decisions about whether they will follow the state law, or continue to follow their religious beliefs, or decide if the two can be reconciled.

He said an additional alternative would be for states to begin adding exceptions to their health insurance requirements for those who have been, are, and will continue taking care of their own bills, such as members of the various Christian sharing programs.

His group, alone, pays off more than $2 million in medical bills each month, and the programs say they simply haven't had bills that have been approved for payment that haven't actually been paid.

Christian Brotherhood noted that over the last 10 years, participants "have shared more than $400 million to meet Subscriber medical costs."

Christian Care, like the other two Christian groups, has members in all 50 states, and offers lifestyle guidelines to reduce health care costs, discounts on medications, medical care, dental care, vision, hearing and other services, and even helps provide coverage when Christian families are facing a loss of income from sickness or injury.

The success of those voluntary-sharing program contrasts starkly with the failure during the 1990s of those trying to implement the Clinton health care agenda. That plan, developed with a staff of hundreds coordinated by Hillary Clinton and endorsed by President Bill Clinton, even prompted a federal judge to announce sanctions on the Clinton Administration for its "misconduct" surrounding the issue.

The failed health care plan was the center of Clinton's domestic policy for an extended period, and sought to guarantee health care for all Americans. It ultimately was killed by Congress, whose members found that it would have given too much power to the government to make decisions controlling consumers.

In the current situation in Massachusetts, the law aims to cover 95 percent of the state's 500,000 uninsured within three years. The Massachusetts Mandatory Health Insurance program becomes effective July 1, 2007, and has been touted as a model to reach the nation's 45 million uninsured.

It is intended to reach 100,000 poverty-level residents by having them sign up for Medicaid, reach another 200,000 resident families without enough income to afford insurance by having that group pay subsidized premiums.

The others simply will be determined by the state to have enough money to pay for health insurance and ordered to buy it.

Those who fail to follow the law first would lose their personal state tax exemption, probably about $150, and then face increasing penalties up to half the cost of the cheapest policy they should have purchased – which could be thousands of dollars a year.

On the implementation of Massachusetts' plan, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson praised Romney.

"Massachusetts is showing us a better way, one I hope policy makers in Statehouses and Congress will follow," he said.

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