Health Care Will Be Central Issue in Presidential Race

There is widespread support for universal health coverage, but "no one has come up with a workable plan to do it that would not make a large group of people unhappy," Peter Brown writes in his Sacramento Bee column.

"The problem with providing universal health care ... is not morality but practicality," Brown writes. "The lesson from the quick Democratic rejection of [President] Bush's proposal to offer tax credits ... may well be that any real solution to the problem is going to come at the state level," Brown writes.

According to Brown, candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination
"will almost certainly be forced ... to detail how they would make sure every American has health insurance," although Republican candidates are less likely to face a similar test from party voters.

Regardless, "[i]t seems inevitable that many presidential candidates will make health care reform a major part of their campaign," Brown writes. "Worth watching will be whether they are elected because of it, or electrocuted by it," he concludes (Brown, Sacramento Bee, 2/6).