Tag: Hillary Clinton

(This is part one of a two-part column; please note).
On the 20th March, 2003, the USA and 30 allied countries initiated the invasion of a sovereign nation (Iraq), with military action that is currently referred to as the “Iraqi War”. In terms of levity on the foreign-policy front, political writers have had little to laugh at ever since. This is -and continues to be- serious stuff. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost; hundreds of thousands of humans have been maimed and/or wounded; millions of people have been displaced; trillions of dollars have been wastefully spent internationally; and most objective people are still trying to figure out the real reason(s) for this multi-faceted carnage.

Ever since the failure of the Clinton Administration's universal health care initiative in the early 1990s, health care legislation, and much else at the federal level, has been limited to a series of little special deals. A little more spending for you, a little tax break for you. Both the federal tax system, as the 1986 comprehensive reform is reversed, and the public health care finance system, have become increasingly complex, inequitable, and economically damaging. But little groups like their little handouts, which can provide more per beneficiary than anything provided to everyone, and the politically influential like complexity, because it disguises inequities that favor them. Thus, in the last few days, Senator Clinton and President Bush have proposed, as health care solutions, two things I absolutely do not want to see: a further expansion of Medicaid, as opposed to Medicare, and more tax breaks.