Clinton assails Obama’s health plan

Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that Sen. Barack Obama’s healthcare plan breaks faith with core Democratic beliefs and would leave millions of Americans uninsured.

“If we don’t have universal healthcare, we will be betraying the Democratic Party’s principles,” she said at the Des Moines Area Community College student center. “Sen. Obama’s plan does not and cannot cover all Americans.”

The New York senator’s unusually harsh tone on the subject came with Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses five weeks away. For most of the year, Clinton has avoided criticizing her Democratic competitors, taking the position of the above-the-fray front-runner. But lately she has traded charges with other candidates, reflecting the pressures all candidates face to perform well here.

Clinton said she chose to speak at the Ankeny campus outside Des Moines because she appeared there in 1993 when she was pressing universal healthcare during the administration of her husband, Bill Clinton.

“We weren’t successful and I was terribly disappointed, but I didn’t give up,” she said.

She spent much of her speech assailing Obama’s plan, which would create a national healthcare program open to every American and would offer subsidies to lower-income families. The plan would require that children be insured, but it would not mandate that adults have health insurance -- which Clinton said would leave at least 15 million Americans uninsured, including 100,000 in Iowa.

Clinton’s proposal would mandate that every American be insured.

“If anything, Democrats should believe in universal healthcare,” she said. “It distinguishes us from the Republicans. The Republicans don’t believe in it; the Democrats do. We should fight for it.”

The health costs for those who remain uninsured would ultimately be paid by taxpayers under Obama’s plan, which Clinton deemed “a hidden tax for every other American.”

“We all pay the bill,” she said.

Obama, speaking in a conference call with reporters, questioned how Clinton would enforce her plan’s requirement for all Americans to be insured.

“Until she clarifies what exactly she intends to do to enforce this mandate . . . this is more of a political point that she’s trying to make than a real point,” the Illinois senator said.

But, he added: “Let me step back for a second and make a broader point: Sen. Clinton’s plan, my plan, Sen. Edwards’ plan, other people’s plans . . . would be vast improvements over what we have right now.”

Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina criticized both competing plans Wednesday, and said his was the only one that was truly universal.

It would require proof of insurance when income taxes are paid and/or when medical treatment is provided, and would assign families that don’t have insurance to a coverage plan. The government would use collection agencies and garnish wages to go after people who could afford to pay premiums but refused.

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seema.mehta@latimes.com