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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Hillary Clinton* gave two back-to-back speeches on health care in the 2016** swing state of Florida. The later one, at the University of Miami, was visionary (I think the word is) and a sales pitch to UM students to sign up for insurance. The earlier one, the keynote at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual conference, is more interesting. Sadly, as of this writing an official transcript is not online, and reporters were not allowed in the hall (!). So Ill have to cobble the Clinton* quotes together from multiple sources.

Heres what I think is the key section (which is not the same as what the press thinks is the key section). From Health Populis live transcript in the hall:

[CLINTON:] I am a believer in the idea that good data helps to make good decisions. Its true in life.

Its important to be guided by evidence about what works and what doesntnot ideology or personally held beliefs.

Unfortunately weve seen too often in Washington recently that many of our public debates take place in an evidence-free zone. (Applause) That is bad news for anyone who wants to get something done who would rather choose common ground over scorched earth. (Applause)

For example, the hyper politicized debate from the beginning has been often more about ideology than about data and what we can learn. The scare tactics have not necessarily helped us understand how best to improve care, lower costs, expand coveragebut to keep what works at the same time. Thats why we need what youre doing so badly. To get back to evidence-based policy debates. And to use that when we need to fix things.

OK, lets talk about evidence-based just for one second. As I wrote:

The key point to remember in all discussions of ObamaCare is that neither it, nor indeed the entire private health insurance industry, should exist. They are rent-seeking parasites, economic tapeworms. One does not improve a tapeworm; one removes it.

To understand this simple point, all we need to do is look north to Canada, where we see a single payer system they call it Medicare delivering equal or better health outcomes at dramatically lower cost, without a health insurance industry, and without ObamaCares bizarre, mystifying, and above all unfair Rube Goldberg-esque complexity. In fact, if wed passed HR 676 in 2009, we would have saved hundreds of billions of dollars by now (more than enough to cover everyone) and thousands of lives, though ObamaCare apologists dont like to talk much about the excess deaths that ObamaCares achingly slow rollout caused and is still causing.

Read more:

Hillary Clinton, Pre-2016, Gingerly Addresses ObamaCare Debacle, Supports Evidence-Based Changes