Health Care ’08: How Do the Candidates Compare?

To truly make insurance accessible and affordable, however, both candidates are proposing something new: a public insurance plan that would compete with private companies. Obama’s plan is modeled after the health benefits that federal employees currently receive and Edward’s plan would be similar to Medicare, but separate from it.

The plans would be available to all Americans without insurance and subsidized for those who could not afford it. Employers would be required to offer insurance to their employees or would have to pay into the national plan. Private insurers could face regulations on how much they charge individuals.

Though neither Edwards nor Obama advocate for a single-payer system, both of their public plans could result in one if the demand was there. In other words, if people are happy with the public program, and find that it costs them less than private or employer based insurance, we could have a government run insurance program that covered most of the population.

One critical difference is that Edwards mandates that every American have health insurance—making it truly universal—while Obama only requires children to be insured, believing that once insurance is affordable, people will buy it.

What about Hillary? Although Clinton has outlined a seven-step strategy to contain costs and improve care, she has not yet indicated how she will increase coverage; her full plan is speculated to come out later this summer. This postponement may be working in her favor since she can avoid having to defend specific—potentially contentious—proposals and focus more on the big picture.

Besides coverage, many aspects of the plans are similar. Clinton and Obama both want to move to a more efficient health care system with better information technology, including paperless technology; Obama and Edwards would help fund their programs by repealing Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, which are set to expire in 2010. All three plans would reduce administrative costs associated with having multiple private insurers. Likewise, all the candidates see major savings by making preventative programs and screenings more accessible, thereby avoiding the high costs associated with treating conditions once they have spiraled out of control.