Obama lays out detailed healthcare plan

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama (Ill.) outlined a detailed plan in Iowa City, Iowa, Tuesday to provide universal health coverage and to reduce the cost of medical care.

Speaking less than a week after his arch-rival for the presidency, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), laid out her healthcare plans, Obama acknowledged that reforming the vast and complex healthcare system would be difficult, but said, “We are not a country that allows major challenges to go unsolved and unaddressed while our people suffer needlessly,” according to his prepared remarks.

{mosads}In addition to promising universal coverage, Obama said that his plan would save a “typical family” $2,500 a year in healthcare spending.

The proposal would partially be financed by not extending tax cuts scheduled to expire in several years. In addition, Obama said that his plan would reduce spending in the healthcare system. He did not offer an estimate of the cost of his plan.

Obama also reiterated his vow that every American would have access to private or government-sponsored health benefits by the end of his first term if he were elected president.

People who currently are covered would be able to keep what they have, Obama said. “If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less,” he said.

The candidate blamed the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries for rising healthcare costs and the failure of past reform efforts.

Describing healthcare as a right, Obama said, “I believe that no amount of industry profiteering and lobbying should stand in the way of that right any longer. …

“We have talked, tinkered, and let this crisis fester for decades. … [C]andidates offer up detailed healthcare plans with great fanfare and promise, only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance industry lobbying once the campaign is over,” Obama said.

“It’s time to bring together businesses, the medical community and members of both parties around a comprehensive solution to this crisis, and it’s time to let the drug and insurance industries know that while they’ll get a seat at the table, they don’t get to buy every chair,” he said.

Two other leading Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), already have laid out healthcare reform plans. Clinton so far has only unveiled her proposal to reduce costs, but she plans to offer more detail about expanding coverage in the coming weeks. Obama’s and Edwards’s announced proposals encompass both cost and coverage.

Each of the three candidates included elements such as expanding the use of information technology in healthcare, promoting preventive medicine and offering coordinated care for people with chronic diseases in their proposals.

Obama, however, is the first of the three apparent frontrunners to call for the creation of a new federally administered healthcare program, based on the benefits offered to government employees. Obama also would use federal resources to provide “reinsurance” to cover catastrophic healthcare costs.

Most businesses would be required to offer coverage or pay into a fund for publicly subsidized benefits, and Obama would expand Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to cover more low-income people. Obama also proposed instituting new federal regulations of health insurance, including a prohibition against denying coverage because of preexisting conditions, and greater scrutiny of mergers between health insurers.