Get ready the second version of Hillary Care!

“For months, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has promised a plan to bring health care to every American. She was to make good on that pledge Monday, unveiling a sweeping proposal requiring everyone to carry health insurance and offering federal subsidies to help reduce the cost of coverage.

With a price tag of about $110 billion per year, Clinton’s “American Health Choices Plan” represents her first major effort to achieve universal health coverage since 1994, when the plan she authored during her husband’s first term collapsed.

The former first lady says she has learned from that experience, which almost derailed Bill Clinton’s presidency and helped put Republicans in control of Congress for years to come. Aides say she has jettisoned the complexity and uncertainty of the last effort in favor of a plan that stresses simplicity, cost control and consumer choice.

The centerpiece of Clinton’s plan is the so-called “individual mandate,” requiring everyone to have health insurance ‚Äî just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Rival John Edwards has also offered a plan that includes an individual mandate, while the proposal outlined by Barack Obama does not.

“It puts the consumer in the driver’s seat by offering more choices and lowering costs,” Neera Tanden, Clinton’s top policy adviser, told The Associated Press. “If you like the plan you have, you keep it. If you’re one of tens of millions of Americans without coverage or don’t like the coverage you have, you will have a choice of plans to pick from and you’ll get tax credits to help pay for it.”

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, has already laid out proposals to improve health care quality and reduce costs. She was to release her universal health care plan in Iowa, the first voting state.

With 47 million Americans currently uninsured, the Democratic presidential contenders have been united in advocating universal coverage. They have parted ways on certain specifics, including the individual mandate, which has detractors from both ends of the political spectrum.

Republican skeptics say it would be too invasive and would restrict personal freedom and choice. Liberal Democrats have expressed concern that such a mandate would be too financially burdensome for lower-income individuals and families — a concern shared by Obama, who has said individuals cannot be forced to purchase insurance until the cost of coverage is substantially reduced.

Aides said Clinton believes that an individual mandate is the only way to achieve health care for all. A key component of her plan would be a federal tax subsidy to help individuals pay for coverage.”

Don’t you love it when a news story is written like a campaign press release? Oh well.

I’m looking forward to her floating this idea again. Especially when she claims it won’t increase Government control, yet with a $110 billion dollar price tag it can do no other. But even more is the mandation of purchasing health care. I’m sorry Mrs. Hsu, I’ll make that decision whether to or not on my own based on my own freedom of choice.

Still it’s was her fiasco that helped us into the majority in 1994, so there is an upside to this.