The candidates on health care: Democrats

I'm unquestionably for Kucinich, and not just because of his health care plan, which is [as far as I can tell] the only single-payer, publicly-funded plan offered by any candidate. Of all the for-profit plans, I think I like Richardson's idea the best. However, as a public service, I link you to each of their websites.

• Dennis Kucinich offers Medicare for All. You can see the original bill here.


• Bill Richardson would let all the rest of us buy the same for-profit insurance that federal employees have, lower the age to get into Medicare, and expand Medicaid/SCHIP for the lower-income folks.


• Mike Gravel offers us universal health care vouchers. I don't know exactly what these are, and he only provides a short paragraph or two on each of his issues. Maybe he'll expand on this later.


• Barack Obama* wants to make for-profit insurance more affordable, modernize technology, increase quality, and give us incentives to lead develop healthier habits.


• Hillary Clinton has a whole page but doesn't give many details. Looks like she's for making for-profit insurance more affordable too, but I can't tell for sure.


• John Edwards* would make for-profit insurance more affordable and lean on businesses to shoulder the burden for their employees.


• Joe Biden3 short paragraphs that essentially add up to modernize the status quo and wait to see what states do about their problems.


• Chris Dodd essentially offers the same as most of the others, make for-profit insurance more affordable, modernize the system, incentivize healthy behaviors, etceterblah etceterblah etceterblah.

Republicans tomorrow night.


*Update: I re-read these two plans, Edwards' and Obama's, more carefully, after reading Krugman's critique of Obama's plan. Looks like they both propose to not only regulate for-profit insurance more closely, but to set up public health insurance plans too, that [some? all?] people will be allowed to buy into. This means I should go back and re-read all the others more carefully too. Alternatively, y'all could just read them yourselves, now that I've been helpful enough to link to them for you.