Hillary Weighs Garnishing Wages to Pay for Universal Health Care

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., this morning left open the possibility that, if elected, her government would garnish the wages of people who didn't comply with her health care plan. "We will have an enforcement mechanism, whether it's that or it's some other mechanism through the tax system or automatic enrollments," Clinton said in an appearance on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos". Clinton went on to say, though, that such mechanisms would not include penalties. "They don't have to pay fines … We want them to have insurance. We want it to be affordable. And what I have said is that there are a number of ways of doing that. Now, there's not just one way of getting to that."

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has raised questions about how Clinton intends to pay for and implement her universal health care plan. Clinton responded to her opponent, saying "The misleading information that Sen. Obama's campaign is putting out, that I will force people to do it even if they can't afford it, is absolutely untrue." "It's so reminiscent of old 'Harry and Louise' talking about how, 'Oh, the sky will fall if we try to have universal health care.' He's playing right in to all of the arguments against this core value of the Democratic Party," she said in response to a recent Obama campaign mailer criticizing her plan.

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Australia: State health system worse despite cash injection

Surprise! surprise! There's no cure for malignant bureaucracy other than abolishing it and starting again

QUEENSLAND'S health system continues to struggle and is getting worse in some areas despite a multibillion-dollar cash injection. A new report has found many patients are still waiting longer than recommended for critical surgery while record numbers are presenting to emergency departments. Queensland Health's Public Hospital Performance Report for the 2007 December quarter shows the department has already spent $5.5 million in 2007-08 outsourcing surgery to the private sector in an attempt to clear the backlog.

Health Minister Stephen Robertson yesterday said the report showed the system was performing more surgery, treating more patients and providing more outpatient services than ever before. "Now I am not for a second suggesting all of our problems are fixed," Mr Robertson said. "We still have a lot of work ahead of us to build a first-class health system for Queensland."

However, Coalition Health spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said the Government's $10 billion promise to fix the system was failing. "More Queenslanders are waiting longer for their surgery than ever before. We have never seen the situation this critical."

The report found the percentage of Category one patients who had waited longer than the recommended 30 days for surgery had almost doubled to 13.9 per cent in 12 months. The percentage of Category two patients overdue for surgery was 22.5 per cent while Category three was 29.9 per cent. Overall, 28,579 patients were waiting for elective surgery, slightly more than the number who were waiting a year earlier.

Some of the hospitals with the biggest percentage waiting lists across the elective surgery categories were Princess Alexandra (38.6 per cent), Royal Brisbane and Women's (37.6 per cent) and Mater Adult (34 per cent). The report found a record 842,725 patients were admitted to public hospitals in 2007, a 9.2 per cent increase on 2005.

Mr Robertson said the increasing number of emergency department patients was hurting the system's ability to reduce elective surgery waiting lists. "The same surgeons, the same nurses, the same operating theatres that you use to perform elective surgery are the ones where emergency surgery is performed," he said.

However, Mr Langbroek said the Government constantly had different excuses. "It begs the question about all the extra resources we keep hearing about and what is happening to it?" he said. [Most of it goes on more and more clerks and "administrators"]

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