Analysis: What's the truth about 'HillaryCare 2.0?'
HUMBOLT, Iowa -- Whenever she mentions her proposal for providing universal access to health care at presidential campaign events, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is certain to get widespread applause from the audience.
Clinton tells them her American Health Choices Plan allows people who are happy with their coverage to "keep it, no questions asked" while offering the nation's 47 million uninsured and those dissatisfied with the coverage the choice to join the congressional health plan.
"My theory is, if it's good enough for Congress it's good enough for America, and we are going to make it happen," she told an audience in Humboldt on the final stop of a four-day swing through Iowa.
But Democratic voters attending several of Clinton's events in Iowa this week said they didn't know much about the details.
And because of that lack of familiarity, Republicans have been able to characterize Clinton's plan as socialized medicine without much protest from Democrats.
Conservatives have dubbed Clinton's proposal as "HillaryCare 2.0," recalling her complicated proposal for universal coverage that failed to gain congressional approval in 1993-94 when she was first lady.
At a forum for Republican presidential candidates Wednesday in Detroit, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani sparred on some issues, but they were united on Clinton's health care plan.
"If we do HillaryCare or socialized medicine, Canadians will have no place to go to get their health care," Giuliani quipped, referring to the Canada's single-payer national health system.
"HillaryCare is government gets in and tells people what to do from the federal government's standpoint," Romney said. He said his plan removed "the burden of free-riders" by getting "everybody in the system."
However, health care experts say Romney and Clinton's plans both do the same thing — they put the obligation for obtaining health care on the individual. The difference is that Romney wants the states to handle the details on how to make it happen while Clinton offers a national solution.
