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Democrats edge toward Clinton position with new health-care plan
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On the Issues
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Published: August 10, 2008
PITTSBURGH
Democrats shaped a set of principles yesterday that commits the party to guaranteed health care for all, heading off a potentially divisive debate and edging the party closer to the position of Barack Obama's defeated rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Obama, soon to be the Democratic nominee, has stopped short of proposing to mandate health coverage for all. He aims to achieve something close to universal coverage by making insurance more affordable and helping struggling families pay for it.
Advisers to Obama and Clinton both told the party's platform meeting they were happy with the compromise, adopted without explanation as to how health care would be guaranteed.
In return for the guarantee, activists dropped a tougher platform amendment seeking a government-run, single-payer system and another amendment explicitly holding out Clinton's plan as the one to follow. The party now declares itself "united behind a commitment that every American man, woman and child be guaranteed to have affordable, comprehensive health care."
Under any system in play, most people would still put out money for health insurance as they do now, but they would get help when needed. That was a common feature of the plans put forward by Obama and Clinton in the primaries. But she would have required everyone to get insurance, while Obama's plan makes it mandatory only for children.
Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party, praised "the spirit of this compromise." Judith McHale, a Clinton supporter who helped to lead the platform meeting, said that Obama and Clinton advisers worked collegially throughout the process.
For the 186-member platform committee, one imperative yesterday was to satisfy Clinton loyalists still sore from the often acrimonious primary fight while keeping policy firmly in synch with Obama's campaign. There was little dissent, or room for it.
Democrats made mostly cosmetic changes to a platform draft prepared for the meeting, a process designed to showcase unity more than to air differences in the party on hot-button issues such as the Iraq war, abortion and health care.
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