Clinton unveils US healthcare plan
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton Monday rolled out a long-awaited universal healthcare plan, sparking immediate attacks from rivals in the furiously paced 2008 campaign.
The announcement, in the key state of Iowa, was a symbolic moment, as Clinton's foes have long pilloried her failed attempt to mastermind healthcare reform in her husband Bill Clinton's first White House term.
Even as she spoke, Clinton's Democratic rivals launched counter-offensives on healthcare -- one of the top 2008 issues -- and a possible Republican opponent Rudolph Giuliani, dismissed her plan as "Socialized Medicine."
"Here in America, people are dying because they couldn't get the care they needed when they were sick," Clinton said, as she unveiled the initiative, which will require all Americans to take out a healthcare insurance policy.
"I believe everyone, every man, woman and child, should have quality affordable healthcare in America," Clinton said on the new plan for a country which lacks a state-funded universal national healthcare system.
"While I was disappointed by what happened in 1994, I did not give up," she said, in a reference to the disastrous defeat of Bill Clinton's healthcare plan, which dealt a hammer blow to his young presidency.
The Clinton campaign said the new plan would preserve existing healthcare systems and help around 47 million Americans with no insurance, and tens of millions more who fear they will lose employer-sponsored healthcare.
But Republican front-runner, former New York mayor Giuliani, immediately went on the attack, as his campaign released a memo branding the new version of "Hillarycare" a form of "Socialized Medicine."
The release said Clinton's plan would raise taxes and saddle Americans with the kind of delays that it said plagued state healthcare patients in Canada and Britain.
Democratic Senator Barack Obama, who trails Clinton in national polls, said her plan was similar to his, but didn't go as far on reducing costs.
Obama said the key to reform was building a "broad consensus for change" -- an implicit jab at Clinton, whom Obama says is part of a broken, polarized style of politics in Washington which has failed Americans.
Another Democratic rival John Edwards, made an attempt to steal the headlines, noting in a speech in New York he had laid out the first plan for universal healthcare in the campaign.
Edwards promised that on his first day in the White House, he would introduce a bill to end healthcare coverage for the president, members of Congress and all senior appointees, unless a new universal healthcare law was passed by July 2009.
Clinton however took a pre-emptive strike against rivals, like Giuliani, who brand her approach as a tax-raising, big government program.
"Don't let them fool us again, this is not government run, there will be no new bureaucracy," Clinton said.
She said the plan, which includes federal tax credits for those who cannot afford healthcare, would offer every American they same standard of care as that enjoyed by members of Congress.
It would ensure lower premiums and higher quality, and lessen the power of drug and insurance companies over healthcare choices, she said.
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