:) You make me chuckle, Zola. Despite the fact that I've never met you, I love your thinking...and writing.

I still don't like Clinton...though my reasoning is less about policy and more about what I see as underhanded tactics and fear-mongering which I think is more of the same of what we currently have.

BUT, your post makes me think about Obama's healthcare plan. You have challenged me to find out more...and *that* I can appreciate! :)

I'm so glad you did a health care blog! I'm not taking sides in the primary race but I agree with you that Clinton's health care plan will arrive at universality more rapidly.

Great post, Zola. I printed it out to read, study and inwardly digest.

I'm so glad we get to meet you and your family this coming Sunday. It will be fun. I don't know if I agree with all you've said here or not, but, as you cautioned us - this was not an invitation for us to argue so much as it was you just needing to lighten your load - and speak directly to Obama. I think you did a good job with that goal. See you Sunday!

I don't agree that sexism against Clinton has been more widespread than racism against Obama. I know there are significant numbers of people who would never vote for a black man. In some cases (Kentucky, West Virginia), they come right out and say it. But I haven't heard of large groups of people saying "I could never vote for a woman," only isolated incidents of sexism. What I have seen is a lot of negativity towards Clinton, but I don't think her being a woman is a big part of that. I think people are negative toward her because they don't like her personality, her character or her history. Were Kathleen Sebelius running for president, I'm certain she'd have much lower negative numbers than Clinton.

To "skylights" -
I personally admire Kathleen Sebelius but she is no Hillary Clinton. She doesn't possess the gravitas that Clinton does. I would not give Sebelius the keys to the military or the national treasury - but I would give these to Clinton. As I said, I like Sebelius but she is your typical quiet, "make no waves" woman that while she threatens few men, she also accomplishes little.

Thanks everybody for not tearing me to shreds.
(I didn't turn my computer back on for hours after I posted it cuz I was afraid I'd come back and be hated....)

I figured before I wrote this post that many people wouldn't like what I planned to write.

Yet, this is what I value so about this site - you let me have my say - even when many of you may not agree with it. Thanks. It felt good to get this post off my chest.

I love your writing too, Janet, and, Lola, the kids can't wait to meet you when you guys hit make it to the big city in a couple of days. John, let me know what you think after you digest it all! And, skylights, the sexism I talk about in my post is the ubiquitous kind that faces me every day everywhere I go. I do not think that sexism is the primary motivator in this election. I think issues are the primary motivations for voters, not gender/race. I think voters are motivated by things that matter to them most, such as the health care issue that I speak about.

Thanks ya'll for reading my post.

*Zo J*

I'm in favor of mandating universal health care, too. But I'm not in favor of doing it in the way of Romney's Massachusetts, as I understand Clinton is proposing. Massachusetts has a long history of criminalizing poverty in the name of liberal ideals. Their family law system is the most notorious in the nation that way. (Really, it criminalizes fatherhood in general.) Now they're applying that expertise to health care, and Clinton wants to follow their example, nationally.

If you are so poor that you have to choose between feeding and housing your kids or paying your minimum insurance premium under the mandate, then we should not criminalize feeding your kids. Clinton is willing to do that and Obama is not. If those are the choices, I choose with Obama. Of course I would rather we paid your premium for you if you are that poor -- that's how those nations you mention with successful mandating programs do it. But neither candidate proposes doing that: probably because they can't appeal to the moderates they need in November with that much socialism.

Of course Clinton will say that her program does not criminalize being as poor as I described. Like Massachusetts, she may plan to buy health care for the poorest of the poor, and pretend like that takes care of the problem. But, like Massachusetts's, her claim rests on current ludicrous (Republican designed) ways of measuring poverty. Obama knows that these aren't fair to the poor; she apparently does not. So I do not see how, of these two, Obama is the one who does not understand the health care issue.

Your point about mandating lowering costs is a good one! But how quickly can it do that given the wealth of our health insurance companies, who will resist with every fiber of their being (as they did when they defeated Hilary's '92-93 effort to reform health care). However long that will take, assuming that it will work at all, the criminalization of poverty that worries Obama will be a certainty for the whole duration.

Finally, if we believe the experts it does not matter which of these health care plans are better: if we can't move the nation about 10 degrees farther left (I am in favor of 25 degrees, personally), there is no way that either of these health care plans is going to get passed by an American Congress. We're certainly not going to move the nation 10 degrees left, soon -- especially not with Clinton so determined to hopelessly divide the Democratic party (for the sake of her 2012 "I told you so" campaign?).

Peter, Clinton is not heading in the direction of Massachusetts with her health care ideas. She believes in one system for everybody, not a class system, which is what Massachusetts has. Clinton has studied this extensively (as have many people) and she, like most experts, agrees that in the U.S. it might be necessary to take incremental steps to head in the right direction.

However, unlike Obama, Clinton understands which steps will move us in the direction and which ones won't.

The first step is to begin to remove class divisions between people in the provision of healthcare by beginning to create larger and larger and more equitable risk pools.

Risk pools really are the answer here and this is the concept that Obama is missing.

Obama will NOT be able to do anything to bring down the costs of healthcare without the establishment of a "we are all in this together" risk pool. Clinton understands this - and this is why she wants to begin by mandating that all Americans have insurance.

Peter, you mention in your comment a lot of references to "if you are so poor" and thus and so. Which I think misses the point.

See, we have Medicaid now for the "truly poor" and we have S-CHIP medical insurance for the children of the "working poor" - but neither of these programs do anything whatsoever for the 47 million working poor (mostly employed adults) that have no insurance at all because they don't make enough money to afford to be in a reasonably priced risk pool. And, Medicaid and S-CHIP do nothing for the other 100 million Americans that are woefully UNDERINSURED - also because they don't either qualify for a reasonably priced risk pool (their premiums are too high) or - because they make too little money to afford it.

Bottom line - 1 out of every 6 Americans has no access to medical care at all TODAY. And, 2 our of 6 Americans has insurance that is so poor and inadequate that they avoid going to the doctor for routine or preventive care - or when they do get sick - it literally bankrupts them. Healthcare is the number 1 reason in America why Americans file for bankruptcy. This only happens in America.

Peter, there's one other thing that you've said that I must address.

You seem to be operating under the misconception that the other civilized and developed countries have many different health plans for their different classes of citizens and that they give money to the poorest citizens (like Obama is recommending we do) so that the poorest citizens can "buy" insurance.

That's not the way it's done.

The United States is unlike every other country because it maintains so many separate systems for separate classes of people.

All the other countries have settled on one model for everybody. One model for everybody!

For example, Canada, S. Korea and Taiwan have one system for everybody that utilizes private-sector providers, but ALL payments for EVERYBODY come from a government-run insurance program that every citizen pays into. This is called a single payer system and all of it moneys come from taxes collected by the government - NOT PREMIUMS, per se. Those countries are utilizing one risk pool - unlike here in the U.S. where we have hundreds of thousands of different risk pools with different costs and affordabilities.

In Great Britain, New Zealand, Spain, and most of Scandinavia health care is provided and financed by the government through tax payments, just like the police force or the public library. In those systems, it is single-payer, universal, and mandated inclusion. They also keep their costs down by requiring that all be a part of it. Those systems are paid by taxes, not premiums and there are no health care bankruptcies, no class systems or different type coverages by class. All are treated the same.

The systems in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland are also COVER EVERYBODY THE SAME in the same risk pools. Even though these latter nations utilize the traditional concept of insurance companies and premiums, all of the insurance companies have to cover all or any of the people that want to be covered - and do it for exactly the same price. Consequently, essentially, they have only one RISK pool.

This is much simpler than the U.S. system; it's fairer and cheaper, too. It qualifies as universal by being mandatory.

I'm trying to convey to you Peter that risk pools are the key to equanimity, lowering cost across the board and universality.

Clinton understands the systems like those of the countries I described above and, like all those countries, she wants to make health care mandatory in order to begin creating equitable risk pools.

Obama totally misses this point and by thinking he can lower health care costs without creating universal risk pools. He can't. And, by going that route, he can actually sabotage the progress that most citizens of Americans would like to make towards universal health care - and by sabotaging it - he will fail to address the fact that 50% of our U.S. citizens are unable to fully access medical care.

That sort of suffering has gone on long enough.

We need someone steering the health care ship who knows how to read maps. It's a strike while the iron is hot phenomena. If he fails to "get" the concept of mandatory inclusion and risk pools - the opportunity may pass us by. We are ready for universal health care in the U.S.

Now, like I said in my post, Obama certainly has the money to surround himself with the right experts and admit he's wrong about health care.

Until he does, though, many of us will have a hard time jumping on his bandwagon.

Hi Zola, Peter, et al -

I'm thrilled that everybody's talking about health care. Here's some very informative posts at Everyday Citizen about our current health care market and how to turn a "market" into a "system" - including polls on public sentiment about universal healthcare. Check some of these out!

More information about our health care crisis in America:

• Health Coverage: Why Are People Uninsured?
• 68 Percent of Americans Favor Mandatory Health Coverage
• Most Americans Agree: We Need Universal Health Care
• Choosing Death or Debt: Is This Our Health Care System?
• Wrong, Again: Bush Denies Health Care for 10 Million Kids.
• 81% Support Expanding SCHIP, Including Republicans
• The Time Has Come for Bold Change
• John Edwards' critical insight about national health insurance
• Everybody In! Nobody Out!
• Dying in America: Lack of Access to Medical Care
• Who cares that we could save both money and lives?
• Matters of Life and Death, Literally

Zola, I'll fess up right away: you know more about this than I do. And having just looked around online, I have seen plenty of analyses that agree with you. But there is a large, and growing, class of working poor who aren't officially poor, but who are no longer viable if you take ANY percentage from them. I'm not talking about class systems. In many high-cost areas (like the Northeast), one is too poor to have a roof over his head or get to work long before he is poor enough to qualify for existing federal help of any kind. They're the ones Obama is worried about, no?

I've always been in favor of universal health care, and you convince me about the benefits of a mandate. We need a mandate, I agree! But I'm still worried about the costs of a mandate to people, if the method by which we determine who pays nothing is not based on a realistic assessment of who can't afford to pay anything. As I understand it, this is not so much a problem in some of those countries you mention because people in them have legal rights to a living wage and affordable housing, and there is adequate public transportation.

Zola and Peter,

One of our fellow authors at EverydayCitizen pointed out to me that it was a shame (I'm not sure if that's how he phrased it) that Zola has asked in her post that people not argue with her and how that was unfortunate because Zola's post was interesting and seemed ripe for discussion (and argument). Well, Zola, I do think you were being a little skiddish by putting that request (for not argument) in your post, but, I see that you were not offended that people disagreed with you and that your rose to the occasion and debated anyway! And, Peter, thanks to you for ignoring her skiddishness and engaging a debate anyway!!! This is a very interesting and enlightening set of comments - and, like I also mentioned - I love it when people talk about health care reform too!

I enjoyed reading everybody's comments very much.

As stated in previous replies I am a supporter of the Clintons and I thrived quite well under their previous administration. Having said that, Mrs. Clinton has been talking about her health care plan since prior to Bill's administration. She spent eight years in the White House during her husbands administration and in the Senate for longer than that. During this duration I have observed no significant advancements toward universal health care.

We can study and understand the economics behind universal health care, and the issue is important, but hasn't Mrs. Clinton had plenty of opportunities to implement that plan she knows so much about. At the end of the day, congress still has to be convinced. Has she not had her chances to do her convincing?