Hillary's 'Universal' Healthcare?

Hillary Clinton chose this week to make a 'sweeping health care proposal Monday that would require everyone to carry health insurance and offer federal subsidies to help reduce the cost of coverage.' She put the details of her plan up on her campaign website.

Responding to the national sentiment/support for universal health care, she said "It is long past time that Americans and the richest of all countries realize that health care is a right and not a privilege."

But her plan falls far, far short of the type of universal coverage most other countries have. In fact, even calling it a 'universal' plan is a serious stretch of the term and reduces it to a buzzword.

Call me naive, but a single-payer system would seem a far more efficient way of doing this than by trying to "require everyone to carry health insurance." How would the latter work?

As blogger Atrios noted last week, "close to 5% of our GDP is spent on people pushing little bits of paper back and forth between doctors and insurance companies." Under Hillary's system, wouldn't that still be a problem? The only difference it seems to me-- and I admit, I am no expert here-- would be that everyone would have access to said insurance, with some financial support from the government.

Her proposal would hardly make health care a "right and not a privilege", though it's a noteable improvement over the current system. As Michael Moore's movie focused on, even people with insurance are just barely covered, and their companies are always looking for new ways to deny coverage and benefits to them. Does Hillary's system solve that problem? Does it solve the problem of having insurance tied to ones employer in an age where people are constantly moving from job to job? Does it find a solution to the red tape keeping people from getting the care they need? Etc.

Her plan seems to address some of these, but I don't know if it'd really solve them.

Look, I know that the political debate in this country is so ridiculous that a politician can't suggest a national system of health care without the chattering classes freaking out and conservatives warning of the stars and stripes being replaced with a hammer and sickle. But I believe we can do better than this.

[PS- Where do other candidates stand on this? Use the internet mashup debate to find out.]