DES MOINES, Jan. 13 — Ten years after the political collapse of President Bill Clinton's health plan, the Democratic Party's presidential candidates are proposing, once again, major new programs for guaranteed, affordable health insurance, setting the stage for one of the starker contrasts with President Bush in the general election campaign.
The nine candidates for the Democratic nomination disagree, often sharply, on how they would expand coverage, how they would pay for it, whose plan would work best and how many of the more than 43 million uninsured Americans they would try to reach. But beneath these disagreements is a consensus that a health care crisis of soaring costs and declining coverage has returned.
Here in Iowa, affordable health care is at the center of the middle-class populism most Democrats are advancing in campaign commercials and on the stump. At a speech here this morning, Senator John Edwards, the North Carolina Democrat newly energized by The Des Moines Register's endorsement on Sunday, declared that it was time to "make health care a birthright for every child born in America, for the first time in American history."
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Administration officials also reject the idea that spending more federal money is the only — or the best — way to cover more uninsured Americans. They say that some of the president's proposals, like limiting jury awards in medical malpractice suits, will hold down health costs and make insurance more affordable. At the same time, the president's tax cuts and tax-free savings accounts give people more money and flexibility to meet their families' needs, administration officials say.
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http://nytimes.com/2004/01/14/politics/campaigns/14HEAL.html?hp
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