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Politics

Clinton: I'm wiser on health care

The former first lady says that, as president, she can avoid problems that doomed her plan.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 24, 2007

WASHINGTON - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton defended her plan Sunday for universal health care and insisted she won't repeat the mistakes that doomed her earlier effort to cover millions of people when she was first lady.

The New York senator, who is running for president, also pledged to vote against additional war funding unless most combat troops get to come home.

Clinton, interviewed on the Sunday talk shows, sought to portray herself as a humbler, wiser leader who has learned from her mistakes and is trying to shed her image as a polarizing figure who would mire Washington in gridlock.

She giggled her way through questions about whether the health care proposal she announced last week amounted to socialized medicine.

Deflecting criticism from her Republican and Democratic opponents, Clinton called it a "moral imperative" for the country to provide coverage for the estimated 47-million people without health insurance.

Republican Rudy Giuliani has described the plan as a "march toward socialized medicine." Democrat John Edwards has accused her of copying his plan, and he and Sen. Joe Biden both have said she is too divisive to get the job done.

Clinton said she regretted being unable to successfully extend coverage in the early 1990s in a bruising political battle when she was first lady.

"Since we weren't successful, we've seen millions of more people without insurance and many millions more who have insurance, except when they really need it and the insurance company tells their doctor or the hospital they won't pay for the needed treatment," she said on ABC's This Week.

"I think that what is so uniquely American about the American experience is that, you know, you get knocked down, you get back up," Clinton said. "I've learned a lot and I think I now know better how to do what - there is a consensus-building that we must do."

Clinton's plan would require businesses to provide insurance for employees, and the wealthy would pay higher taxes to help defray costs for those less able to pay for it. She put the government's cost at $110-billion a year.

She said she would pay for it through higher taxes and making the health care system more efficient.

On Iraq, Clinton said the time has come to focus on ways to extricate most U.S. combat troops from what she called a "sectarian civil war."

She told Fox News Sunday that her first step will be to vote against funding "that does not move us toward beginning to withdraw our troops, that does not have pressure on the Iraqi government to make the tough political decisions that they have."

[Last modified September 24, 2007, 06:32:01]