Clinton Pitches Cap on Health Insurance

Hillary Clinton has proposed putting a cap on premiums in her universal health care plan, limiting them to between 5% and 10% of family income, the New York Times reports. The average cost of a family policy bought by an individual last year was $5,799, or 10% of median income, but some ranged up to 16%.

In an interview with the Times, Clinton also proposed requiring insurers to spend a fixed proportion of premiums on health care, rather than overhead. She discussed her proposals to extend coverage to the 47 million uninsured Americans, to be funded largely by rolling back Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. An expert said Clinton's premium cap plan was realistic at 10% but likely unworkable at 5%, and questioned her proposal to not vary the cap by income. (More Hillary Clinton stories.)