This is a special Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, September 17th, 2007.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It's been 14 years in the making, but Hillary Care is back.

Presidential candidate US Senator Hillary Clinton

is anxious to avoid having her plan labeled a bureaucratic big government

solution.

Michael Tanner, the Cato Institute's Director of Health and Welfare

Studies, says seeing is believing.

While I'd be less concerned about the perception than the reality, this is a big government bureaucratic solution to health care.

This is a plan that would cost $110 billion in new taxes.

It would mandate that every individual go out and

purchase health insurance. It imposes a pay-or-play mandate on employers. It has a

host of new insurance regulations.

It allows the expansion of government programs from S-CHIP to Medicare.

Essentially, this is a government takeover of the health care system.

Hillary Care is back.

To hear your description, it seems actually somewhat similar to

Romney Care. Well, actually this is very similar to the plan that Governor

Romney put forward in Massachusetts and signed into law, an individual

mandate, insurance regulations, that sort of thing.

Governor Romney has since put out a national plan which is quite different

which essentially would give money to the states and allow them to

...