This is a quick review of the 1994 National Health Security Act, or Hillary Care, as we all like to call it. Some revisionists have been recalling it in the press lately and they are making it seem as though the plan was something it was not. Of course, with a 1300 + page plan, I can not go into everything, but I will briefly explain how the plan was suppossed to work, and list the "deal breakers" (with page references) which were thrown in there for reasons I think were meant to intentionally make the plan unpalatable to Congress. Unlike Switzerland (which many are trying to compare Hillary's plan to) the NHS would have been paid for 80% by business, even small businesses which may not provide health insurance today. As many small businesses are run on a shoe string budget, mandating such an expense to them would have driven most small businesses out of existence-which is why the NHS plan was opposed by small business. (Switzerland demands its individuals show evidence of insurance or pay a higher income tax to get the governments plan-business only pays if it is in the employment contract. And this is the main reason I think even a sanitized version of this would not pass even today-the primary problem with healthcare in the US is the drain it places on our economy. By shifting the burden to business, we do not alleviate that drain. The movers and the shakers for Universal Health Care now are Big Business-they want out of providing healthcare for their employees.) Private insurers would still fund the healthcare system and employers would choose among which private plans they would use( as it is now) but the plans would have their premiums and benefits set and run by a governmental organization called a Regional Health Care Alliances. The plans offerred would all be HMO. The system is similar to what Clinton did with Medicare while he was President-he had it run in each state by an individual "carrier" and administered by Medicare HMOs. This didn't work and has since fallen apart for the most part, although a few are still around like "Americas Health Choice". The Regional Health Care Alliances would have their global budgets, physician and hospital fee schedules and oversight from a committee of seven appointed by the President called the National Health Board. (page 167)It was the duty of this Board to see that every region of the country recieved exactly the same care as every other region- money would be siphoned from suburban areas to urban needy centers, for instance. And the first year of the program had an anticipated budget capped at 425 billion dollars less than total health care expenditures in 1992. So, even though it was not a "Single Payor" system, it mandated uniform care delivered and rules for all players involved. Now, the deal breakers....everyone was mandated to belong to this system and have a national health are ID card issued to them. This would also place their medical records in a national data base to be retrieved by anyone in the NHS for "quality insurance reasons". (page 145) The penalty for going outside the system for a patient was as extreme as being excluded from the system for up to 5 years (page 940). That is right, no healthcare for five years! Civil libertarians would be interested to know that there was a School Health Board created in the act which would have allowed agents of this board to do unannounced "home health visits" without a warrant! (page 607). If a physician saw a patient outside of the system-i.e. like I have answered some people's questions from the VS via E mial, the penalty could be five years of prison time, loss of medical license and a fine of $50,000. (page 103). IN addition, physicians would lose the ability to decide which specialties they would practice-the federal government would determine what the needed specialties were and set up "physician re-education programs" as needed to fill these specialties. (page 103). Malpractice would also change froma civil to a criminal charge- any treatment which resulted in bodily harm to a patient could be tried as a criminal case and lead to the imprisonment of the physician (page 952). Needless to say, the AMA did a poll in 1993 and found that more than 50% of its members said they would quit practicing medicine if Hillarycare ever passed. Now the question is, were these outrageous things just poorly worded phrases where the writers of this travesty meant something else? Or were they put in there specifically to kill the plan. I think they were put in there to actually prevent this plan from ever passing.