Gore, Bradley Camps Clash Over New Health Care Ad

Vice President Al Gore released a new television ad Wednesday promising to offer quality health care for every child in America and suggesting it is the next step toward “coverage for every single American.”

Democratic rival Bill Bradley’s campaign, which has not aired television ads yet, immediately blasted the spot, saying it rips off their ideas and obscures the fact that the Clinton-Gore administration had promised, and failed, to deliver health care to poor children during its two terms.

The war of words illustrates the driving role health care is assuming in the race for the presidential nomination. A senior Gore advisor said surveys in Iowa and New Hampshire--the host states for next year’s initial contests--show that Democratic voters favor the vice president over Bradley on health care.

Bradley’s health plan offers more extensive coverage than Gore’s and it is significantly more costly, prompting the vice president’s attack on the plan as a budget buster. But Bradley has also portrayed Gore’s version as an abandonment of the “fundamental Democratic principle of basic health care for all Americans.”

Gore signals support for universal coverage in his new 30-second ad, which aired Wednesday in Iowa and New Hampshire and is also available for viewing on the vice president’s Web site at https://www.algore2000.com.

“It’s just unconscionable at a time when we have the strongest economy in history, we’re the wealthiest nation on Earth, to have millions and millions of children who have no health coverage at all,” Gore says. “We ought to change that.”

“We ought to start by making a commitment to have affordable high-quality health care for every child in America before the end of the next president’s term,” the ad continues. “And we can do that within a balanced budget. Then we can go down the road toward coverage for every single American.”

Off screen on the campaign trail, Gore’s staff and Bradley’s traded harsh verbal blows. “Sen. Bradley is a trillion-dollar man with a bad health care plan,” crowed Gore press secretary Chris Lehane.

Bradley’s campaign, meanwhile, accused the vice president of stealing rhetoric from their candidate’s speeches for the new ad.

“It is astonishing how closely the language [of the ad] parallels what Bradley has been saying for months,” said his press secretary, Eric Hauser.

Gore media consultants declined to say how much would be spent to air the ad, but Lehane said it was “a real buy,” meaning it would run more than once in several markets in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Bradley has proposed to extend health insurance to nearly all of the 44 million Americans who are not covered. He estimates the cost at between $50 billion and $65 billion a year over the next decade.

Gore says that plan would actually cost more than $1 trillion. The vice president proposed a less-ambitious plan to extend health care to 11 million uninsured children by 2005--at a cost of about $312 billion over 10 years.

Recent studies have also evaluated the competing health plans.

Emory University professor Kenneth E. Thorpe, a former Clinton administration official, concluded in a study released Monday that Bradley’s plan would cost more than three times as much as Gore’s over the next decade but would cover only 3 million more uninsured Americans.

On Wednesday, the nonpartisan Consumers Union called Bradley’s plan “preferable” on seven of eight measurements: commitment to universal coverage, progress on insuring all children, Medicare prescription drugs, insurance market reforms, equitable tax policy and “steps in the right direction.” Gore’s plan was rated preferable in terms of long-term Medicare reforms.

The latest clashes in the Democratic primary race come as two polls show Gore retaking a lead over Bradley in New Hampshire.