Clinton, Obama pit health care plans

Photo:On the campaign trail Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton often gets her loudest applause when she talks about her failed health care reform effort, and the candidates’ promises to tackle universal coverage have become a major flash point on the campaign trail.

The New York senator says she learned from her mistakes and will give Americans a choice of health care plans, while attacking rival Sen. Barack Obama as having abandoned the core principle of universal care because he doesn’t mandate insurance coverage.

Mr. Obama says their plans aren’t so different on substance — they both would open the congressional insurance plan to everyone, for example — but lately he has toughened his language. The Illinois senator says the Clinton plan “forces” families to buy insurance, and argues subsidizing health care costs is more important than mandating coverage.

Democratic congressional leaders mostly have avoided getting in the middle of the health care issue.

Leadership aides say privately they expect Congress to start laying the groundwork for the broader health care proposal they would likely have to consider if a Democrat is president in 2009. Among those initiatives are creating an electronic medical-records system to cut costs and making sure health care providers use technology to offer the most-efficient care.

In the meantime, health care has provided for the most heated exchanges on the campaign trail, on television in Wisconsin and in nasty mailers each candidate has sent to voters.

The issue has allowed Mrs. Clinton to showcase her credentials on a key issue and provided Mr. Obama a tangible example of his warning that he’s the better choice because America does not want to refight the battles of the past two decades.

Mrs. Clinton says a president would not be able to stand up to special interests and pass a plan unless the president is committed to universal coverage from the start, and she says only a candidate who starts out with a mandated plan to cover everyone will be able to beat the Republicans.

“When it comes to universal health care, my opponent is saying ‘No, we can’t,’ ” Mrs. Clinton said at a stop in Washington earlier this month. “Well, I say, yes, we can, and yes, we will, if we make the right decision in this election.”

She has framed the issue as a “moral” one, and told voters in Virginia, “If you care about health care for everyone I hope you will vote for me.”

This weekend Wisconsin voters were treated to a mailer featuring seven persons under the headline, “Barack Obama, which of these people don’t deserve health care?”

It also charges the Obama plan “wastes billions” and that his plan says, “No, we can’t” have universal coverage.

The mailer prompted Obama supporter Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to label it as “basically fear-mongering,” and criticize the Clinton campaign for trying to distort the Obama plan.

The Massachusetts Democrat, who has championed universal care for decades, told reporters yesterday he was “shocked and very surprised” by the mailer because similar tactics helped derail the Clinton efforts in 1994.

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