American Health care: Gore and Bradley One Problem Two Solutions
Uploaded by Zoetwo on Dec 04, 1999
The nation's economy has produced 9.5 million jobs in the last four years and raised wages for even the lowest-paid workers. As Americans buy more homes, cars and other consumer goods, the number buying health insurance has not budged. Now, the 44 million Americans without insurance are taking a prominent place in the national spotlight, thanks to the Democratic presidential primary. And in Vice President Al Gore and former senator Bill Bradley, the nation has a chance to sort out how far it is willing to go, if at all, toward promising health care for everyone.
In proposals issued recently, both Democratic candidates have promised to cover all 11 million children who have no insurance, with taxpayers paying the entire cost for the poor. Gore and Bradley would also give substantial help to the parents of the nation's poorest children. But they split over one growing class of people: the millions of adults who are not quite poor, but who find insurance so expensive that they do not buy it.
Almost 17 percent of full-time workers have no insurance, often because employers do not offer it or have shifted costs to employees. Many of the new jobs created in the current boom are at small businesses, which are less likely to offer coverage. Bradley has proposed an expansive plan that helps people further up the economic ladder and which carries an expansive price tag to match. Gore, by contrast, would spend money on the poorest and near-poor while offering only limited help to others.
The question has barely been raised among the Republican presidential contenders. But it has sparked the sharpest debate yet in the Democratic campaign, and polls show that voters are likely to make it a general election issue. With surveys suggesting that no candidate can win the Democratic nomination without a strong health plan, Bradley boasts that he is proposing a big idea to attack a big problem. He has derided Gore's plan as ''definitely timid.'' The tactic has helped raise Bradley's profile among Democrats
Gore, by contrast, talks freely of his plan's limitations, and his staff uses the word ''incremental'' to describe it. They say Bradley's plan is too expensive and would divert dollars from other purposes, such as shoring up Medicare.
The true cost of the two plans is open to debate. Bradley says he would spend up...