Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed on Wednesday in a New York Times interview that she would push for caps for health insurance premiums. They would be at around 5 percent to 10 percent of income. That would be a great improvement for those who earn an average wage or less, because right now Americans are paying an average of around 10 percent of their income. This means that those who earn less probably pay more than 10 percent on health insurance.

Clinton said she wanted a cap since she first announced her universal coverage proposal in September, but did not provide exact figures until now. She would like to set the cap at fixed level for all income range. Furthermore, Clinton alleges she would push for requiring insurers to actually use the premiums for providing healthcare, instead of profits and overheads as it is the case now. Schwarzenegger and other governors have requested that 85 percent of premiums be used on health care.

“I know that there are a lot of experts who may disagree about how to get to universal health care,” she said to The New York Times. “But they agree with me that in the absence of universal health care it’s very difficult to control costs, and it’s extremely hard to incentivize quality improvements at the level you need to really see results,” Clinton said.