Words Do Count - As Lawyers Should Know

Senator Clinton is a Yale Law School graduate; Senator Obama is a Harvard Law School graduate. (I must acknowledge a bias towards HLS - my class was 1959.) Both of these respected institutions teach their students that words do count and lawyers must be experts at using words.

Clinton's web site (Obama will be discussed in a separate blog( has a summary of her health plan proposal: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/healthcare/summary.aspx. As I read through it (fully recognizing that it is a "summary"), I noted the use of vague terms, weasel words, and few concrete definitions. The summary calls for ". . . affordable, quality health insurance" and reigning "in costs and to insist on value and quality." Clinton calls for a plan which "will secure, simplify and ensure choice in health coverage for all Americans. . . finally addressing the needs of the 47 million uninsured and the tens of millions of workers with coverage who fear they could be one pink slip away from losing their health coverage - with no overall increase in health spending or taxes." Magically, "For those with health insurance, the plan builds on the current system to give businesses and their employees greater choice of health plans - including keeping the one they have - while lowering cost and improving quality".

When I turn to Clinton's "americanhealthchoices.pdf" site, where the resources (savings related to existing spending) to pay for this utopian health care system are described, I find projected savings related to "Reducing Overpayments and New Efficiencies": $10 billion from Phase-outs of Excessive Medicare Overpayments to HMOs and Other Managed Care Plans; $7 billion in savings related to Unnecessary Medicare and Medicaid Spending; $4 billion in savings related to Constraints on Prescription Drug Costs; $35 billion in savings from Modernizing the Health System. I also find a projected $54 billion savings through "Limits on High-Income Tax Breaks". Add these together to get $110 billion which is a relatively small percentage of our $2 trillion plus current expenditure.

The words do not adequately describe the means for accomplishing the needed savings and new revenue sources Clinton's plan requires, nor do they address the practical means of accomplishing her proposed enormous task. Clinton has not just left herself wiggle room, her use of words belies her own belief in her ability to accomplish the health reform which America needs.