On Hillary and Healthcare

Two stories from The New York Times concerning the subject of healthcare are not good news for Hillary Clinton. The first details what might be termed a self-inflicted wound. It involves a story that Clinton has woven into her stump speech. From the Times:

Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.

The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was still born at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.

"We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story," said Rick Castorp, chief executive officer of the O'Bleness Health System.

The second item, while not as directly linked to Clinton herself, also bears consideration when voters ask whether or not mandatory universal health care is, as Clinton claims, the only real way to go. As many readers know, Barack Obama favors a more market-driven approach, a combination of lower costs for adults and guaranteed access for children. Indeed, though each candidate agrees that we have a problem and that it needs to be fixed, the way each would do so represents a rare policy example of how these two Democrats are different. The Times piece in question looks into how the state of Massachusetts is doing with its first-in-the-nation universal heath care law. The results are decidedly mixed. Read here.

And for further comparison and contrast:
Clinton's plan is here.
Obama's plan is here.