With 92 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of Republicans espousing the belief that all Americans should possess the right to cheap but good health care, according to voters polled here in Nevada, as well as in the other caucus states, and with a little more than half of them, irrespective of party, stating that health-care reform will be the preeminent issue in the 2008 presidential election, it was only natural for someone to organize a presidential forum on the hot topic.
And so that's what the SEIU, a predominant labor union, did. Seven candidates came to talk universal health care at UNLV's Cox Pavilion on March 24, and they were all Democrats (zero Republicans responded to SEIU's invitations).
But of the four who in reality have a chance of winning their party's nomination next year—Bill Richardson, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton—only one, Edwards, had a detailed plan to propound.
The others rendered countless platitudes and plenty of well-known statistics: $2 trillion is spent a year on health care in America, which, according to SEIU president Andy Stern, makes universal health care more of an economic issue than a moral one. Forty-seven million Americans are uninsured today, an absolute disgrace, according to Hillary Clinton, especially because 80 percent of them are working individuals.
Only Richardson says he can reform health care without increasing taxes by even $1, because, Richardson says, he sees where he can mitigate, with better management, the 31 percent of medical costs that currently go to bureaucratic functions. And with electronic record-keeping, which all the candidates pledged and which Clinton says would save $100 million a year, after an initial start-up cost of $200 million.
Clinton claims she could get her plan rolling full-swing in eight years; Obama, in four; and Richardson in one, even though the state he currently governs, New Mexico, has one of the worst uninsured rates in the nation at 21 percent.
In all, the forum lasted 130 minutes, and it produced but one front-runner amongst the 600 health-care professionals and college students who attended—Hillary Clinton, who was no doubt in her element rallying the issue of health care, having been at it for more than 14 years now.