A McCain adviser speaks out on the uninsured.

(CNN) – A health care policy adviser for the McCain campaign told a newspaper reporter that nobody in the United States is technically uninsured, because everyone has access to hospital emergency rooms.

"So I have a solution [to the health care crisis]. And it will cost not one thin dime," John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, told the Dallas Morning News in an interview published Thursday.

"The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care. So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

Hospital emergency rooms cannot technically turn away anyone for financial reasons.

"So instead of producing worthless statistics that people fling around in vacuous editorials and pointless debates, the Census Bureau should produce meaningful numbers, identifying all of the sources of funds people will draw on if they need medical care," said Goodman, who helped write McCain’s health care plan.

That plan would use a combination of tax incentives and market competition to make health care more affordable. It is not a universal health care plan – it does not guarantee insurance coverage for every American.

Read more: Goodman talks to the Dallas Morning News

Take a look: Candidates' health care plans

UPDATE: McCain's campaign says they do not consider Goodman to be an official campaign adviser.

CNN=Politics Daily is The Best Political Podcast from the Best Political Team.

(CNN) — A day after Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr's speech at the National Press Club, Sen. Barack Obama decided that Wright is all wrong.

In the latest episode of CNN=Politics Daily, Suzanne Malveaux reports on Obama's effort Tuesday to cut his ties with Wright in the hopes of limiting the political fallout from Wright's return to the public spotlight.

Sen. John McCain also laid out his plan for health care reform Tuesday. Dana Bash reports on how the Arizona senator would like to treat the nation's ailing health care system.

Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider has another report about health care. Schneider takes a look at how health care is increasingly becoming an economic issue for voters.

Carol Costello does a reality check on proposals by Sens. McCain and Hillary Clinton to provide a federal gas tax holiday.

Finally, Wolf Blitzer gives you an update about whether Sens. Clinton and Obama stand with the Democratic Party's all-important supderdelegates.

Click here to subscribe to CNN=Politics Daily.

John and Elizabeth Edwards are joined by their children in New Orleans as Edwards announced the end of his presidential campaign in January.

(CNN) – Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, is picking sides in the Democratic nomination race – at least with respect to health care. In an interview that aired Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” she threw her support behind Sen. Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.

“In order to ensure that we have universal coverage, we need to say everybody has to join,” Edwards told ABC’s Robin Roberts. “So, for that reason, the mandates that Sen. Clinton is talking about, I think are going to be more successful in achieving the goal,” she added.

Both health care plans have the same goals, said Edwards, but “I just have more confidence in Sen. Clinton’s policies than Sen. Obama’s on this particular issue.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Obama supporter Bill Bradley identified full disclosure as an issue relating to the Clintons.

(CNN) – Three supporters of Sen. Barack Obama took the opportunity, in a conference call with reporters Thursday, to suggest Sen. Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton have not been candid with the American public.

Texans “are gonna want people to shoot straight. They’re gonna want straight answers,” said Texas State Senator Kirk Watson.

Citing Sen. Clinton’s latest campaign theme focused on ‘solutions,’ Watson also said residents of his state are going to asking whether Clinton’s health care plan is actually offering solutions or, instead, raising more questions – including how Clinton would enforce the individual coverage mandate in her plan.

Asked by a reporter about an ongoing issue regarding candidates releasing their tax returns, former U.S. senator Bill Bradley linked Sen. Clinton’s refusal to release her tax returns with her failure to disclose what the individual coverage mandate in health care plan would cost.

Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee followed Bradley saying memos relating to Sen. Clinton’s earlier effort to reform health care during her husband’s administration also have not been disclosed.

“And, as long as we’re on the issue of full disclosure, President Clinton also hasn’t revealed who were the contributors to his presidential library while he was still in office,” added Bradley.

Texas is set to hold its presidential primary on March 4 and Clinton must do well there to keep alive her bid for the Democratic nomination. In 2006, Texas had the highest rate of uninsured residents of any state in the nation, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Sen. Clinton has recently sought to contrast her health care plan with Sen. Obama’s during campaign stops and debates. Former President Bill Clinton also attacked Obama’s health care plan as inadequate while in Texas Friday.

The conference call was held on the same day that Clinton released a new radio ad in Wisconsin touting her health care plan. Wisconsin holds its presidential primaries on March 19.

–CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart

Former President Bill Clinton campaigning for his wife.

TEXARKANA, Texas (AP) — Former President Clinton said Democratic voters who support Barack Obama over his wife are missing out on an opportunity to back a universal health care system for the nation.

"It would be truly tragic if the Democratic Party walked away from universal health care for the first time in 60 years when we finally got the business community and the medical community in line behind us," Clinton said Friday during a campaign swing through East Texas in advance of the state's March 4 primary.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's health plan would require everyone to have health insurance and would provide government assistance to people who can't afford it. Obama, an Illinois senator, has proposed government subsidies to help people buy insurance, but doesn't mandate that they purchase it. Her campaign says Obama's plan would leave up to 15 million people without insurance.

"Her opponent excites more Americans … but would in fact deny us universal health care coverage for the first time," the former president told about 200 people in a gymnasium of a Texarkana community center. "She represents the solution business."

The former president also touched on the war in Iraq, saying indecision by the Iraqi government forces the U.S. to keep its combat troops there.

"If they think we are going to stay there forever and a day, they have no incentive to fix them," Clinton said. "If we stay there, we are not doing them any favors."

Read the rest of this entry »

CORALVILLE, Iowa, (CNN) — In his stump speech assault on entrenched corporate interests and health care companies Saturday, former Sen. John Edwards invoked the recent and controversial death of Nataline Sarkisyan.

Sarkisyan is the 17-year-old girl who died Thursday night at UCLA Medical Center, shortly after her health insurance company reportedly reversed its decision not to pay for a liver transplant.

– CNN's Carey Bodenheimer

Watch Elizabeth Edwards explain why her husband should win the White House.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential contender John Edwards, D-North Carolina, was in the Situation Room Monday. She discussed healthcare, what it's like to be a candidate's spouse, and two of her husband's White House rivals — Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, R-New York. Watch Wolf Blitzer's interview with Mrs. Edwards.

Click here to see CNN's new political portal: CNNPolitics.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) — An association of doctors and nurses will air commercials criticizing the top three Democratic presidential candidates' health care plans during Wednesday night's debate.

The ads, paid for by the California Nurses Association, National Nurses Organizing Committee and Physicians for a National Health Plan, specifically target Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York and former Sen. John Edwards, D-North Carolina. They attack the candidates for including the option for Americans to choose their own private health insurance as part of their universal coverage plans.

"Being better than the Republicans on health care reform is simply not good enough," said Rose Ann DeMoro, Executive Director of CNA/NNOC. "All the candidates' proposals keep the insurance companies at the apex of power, and the health care industry uses their enormous wealth in lobbying and campaign contributions to corrupt the public debate."

The ads will run during the debate on MSNBC in Washington, D.C. and in New Hampshire and on the New England Cable Network.

–CNN Associate Producer Lauren Kornreich

Watch Jessica Yellin's report about the battle of children's health insurance.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The House of Representatives approved a sweeping expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program on Tuesday, but by a margin short of the two-thirds needed to override President Bush's threatened veto.

The $60 billion, 5-year measure would expand the program to cover millions of middle-class families, paying for the expansion with
61-cent-per-pack tax increase on cigarettes. The vote was 265-159, with 45 Republicans joining all but eight Democrats in voting for the plan.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the bill has overwhelming support and warned that Bush would "isolate himself" from the public with a veto.

"Let's hope and let's pray that a very big, strong, bipartisan vote tonight will send him a message to rethink his position," Pelosi said. She said a veto would give new meaning to the biblical injunction, "Suffer little children."

Bush has threatened to veto any expansion of the program beyond the $25 billion he proposed earlier this year. He demanded last week that Congress extend the program before it expires at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Richardson proposed a plan that would allow seniors to get health care at home.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (CNN) — Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson proposed a "house calls" medical plan Thursday that would allow senior citizens to get health care at home they now can only get at the hospital.

The New Mexico governor unveiled the plan, called "Independence at Home," at the Divided We Fail/AARP/Iowa Public Television presidential candidate forum on health and financial security. He said it could save $13 to $16 billion a year by reducing emergency room visits and hospital admissions.

"Through electronic technology, they can get their care at home," Richardson said. "They can do it instead of having 13 doctors and having to go to the hospital the healthcare would come to them at home."

Richardson spokesman Tom Reynolds said the program would be entirely voluntary and would fall under Medicare, at no additional cost to the system.

-CNN Iowa Producer Chris Welch

Senator Hillary Clinton, D-New York

DAVENPORT, Iowa (CNN) — Hillary Clinton responded to a plan that Democratic rival Bill Richardson announced would bring health care directly to people in their homes–as opposed to forcing them to go to a hospital–by talking about her own mother.

"This is an issue that affects all of us," Clinton said. "My mother lives with us, as well, and we see it every single day."

Clinton press secretary Jay Carson said the candidate's mother has lived with the Clintons for "at least a couple of years" but that she¹s "as able and capable as they are."

"She just lives with them," Carson said.

Clinton made the comments at the Divided We Fail/AARP/Iowa Public Television presidential candidate forum on health and financial security.

She called for long-term care tax credit for people providing respite care. She said if the United States were to lose all it's caregivers, it would mean "a $300 billion cost to replace what is done out of love and out of family and other relationships."

-CNN Iowa Producer Chris Welch

Watch Gloria Borger's take on the health care and income tax proposals offered by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Senior Political Analyst Gloria Borger takes a look at Sen. Barack Obama's new income tax plan, Sen. Hillary Clinton's universal health care plan, and John Edwards's unique method for getting Congress to pass his health care plan if elected to the White House. 

Related: Obama's tax plan: Robin Hood Approach

Related: Clinton talks health care

Related: Edwards threatens to cut off health insurance for Congress

Watch CNN's John Roberts interview Sen. Hillary Clinton.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – One day after unveiling her universal health care plan, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, called criticism of her strategy "politics as usual" and defended the strategy as an effective way to give all Americans affordable insurance.

"I feel very good and quite confident that the parts of the plan that I have put together will find a lot of favor among people who know what we have to do to get to universal coverage," Clinton said Tuesday on CNN's American Morning.

Clinton, who was panned for taking a lead role in crafting a healthcare plan in her husband’s administration, also sought to assuage any concerns about her new plan.

"This is not government-run health care," Clinton said. "We're not creating any new bureaucracy. We're trying to build on what works and fix what's broken in our system. If you're satisfied with the health care coverage you have, you get to keep it, no questions asked."

Clinton also released an ad Tuesday touting her plan in Iowa and New Hampshire and will host a Web cast this evening on her presidential campaign Web site.

– CNN Associate Producer Lauren Kornreich

Related: Clinton and health care, take 2

The Best Political Team on TV will be covering the country's reaction to Sen. Clinton's universal health care plan.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – It's the second time around for New York Senator and White House hopeful Hillary Clinton when it comes to universal health care in the U.S. The first time Clinton was the first lady. This time she's running for president. Watch Bill Schneider's and John King's look at the politics of Clinton's second attempt to provide health care coverage to every American.

Watch CNN's Candy Crowley report on Sen. Clinton's health care plan.

(CNN) — White House hopeful and former first lady Hillary Clinton announced her plan to provide health insurance coverage to every American in a speech on Monday. Clinton's rivals were quick to respond as Clinton attempts to complete a project she first began during her husband's presidency. CNN's Candy Crowley reports.

DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) — At a press briefing after Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's health care rollout Monday, senior policy advisers said the New York senator's plan does not currently include any details on whether illegal immigrants will be covered.

Senior policy adviser Laurie Rubiner–while acknowledging that undocumented immigrants are a "huge issue" in this country–said, "That's one we're going to have to think through a little bit."

"We have not dealt with every single detail with this plan," Rubiner continued.

When asked if it would be safe to assume that the Democratic frontrunner, at this point, has no position on coverage for illegal immigrants advisers answered "yes" and said the plan does not "at this point" deal with that issue.

Related: Clinton unveils mandatory health care insurance plan

-CNN Iowa Producer Chris Welch

McCain is finishing up the South Carolina leg of his "No Surrender Tour"

LEXINGTON, South Carolina (CNN) — Sen. John McCain, campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination here Monday, invoked the high-pitched battle over Hillary Clinton's 1993 health care plan when asked to comment on Sen. Clinton's new proposal.

"I haven't seen it, but if it's anything like the last time around where they wanted to have a complete government takeover of the health care system in America with a huge number of new bureaucracies being invented for government, I will oppose it vigorously," McCain told reporters.

Sen. Clinton unveiled her health care plan in Des Moines Monday. It would require all Americans to have health insurance, and she estimated it would cost $110 billion a year in government funds.

— CNN South Carolina Producer Peter Hamby

Watch Mitt Romney's response to Sen. Hillary Clinton's universal health care plan.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney blasted Sen. Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan Monday, calling it “bad medicine.”

“You’ll see that version 2.0 is not likely to have any more success than 1.0,” said Romney, referring to Sen. Clinton’s first attempt to reform the healthcare system in 1993. “'Hillary Care’ continues to be bad medicine.”

Romney, who implemented comprehensive healthcare reform during his term as governor of Massachusetts, said Clinton’s plan relied too much on the federal government and not enough on states or the private market.

“In her plan, it's crafted by Washington; it should be crafted by the states. In her plan, we have government Washington managed health care. Instead, we should rely on the private markets to guide health care,” Romney said during a press conference.

Like the plan passed in Massachusetts during Romney's time in office, Clinton's plan would require individuals to have some form of health care insurance.

But Romney emphatically said the plan implement in Massachusetts was “entirely different” from Sen. Clinton’s.

“Her plan is crafted by Washington. Mine is crafted by individual states,” Romney explained. “Her plan has government insurance. Mine has private insurance. Her plan raises taxes. Mine does not raise tax.”

Related: Clinton unveils mandatory health care insurance plan

– CNN Ticker Producer Xuan Thai

Clinton unveiled her universal healthcare plan Monday.

DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) — Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton announced a $110 billion health care reform plan Monday that would require all Americans to have health insurance.

Clinton unveiled her plan during a high-profile speech at a hospital in the key campaign state of Iowa, surrounded by supporters, American flags and campaign banners.

"Here in America people are dying because they couldn't get the care they needed when they were sick."

"I'm here today because I believe it is long past time that this nation had an answer," Clinton said. "I believe America is ready for change."

"It's time to provide quality affordable health care for every American," Clinton said. "And I intend to be the president who accomplishes that goal finally for our country."

Full story

Clinton said she will unveil her plan for health care coverage on Monday.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Sen. Hillary Clinton will unveil her health care plan to "cover everyone" early next week, the presidential frontrunner said Wednesday.

The New York Democrat made the comments in an online presidential forum sponsored by Slate, Yahoo! and the Huffington Post.

"Obviously, I hope the headline is that, you know, Hillary is back, and we're going to get it done this time, because we tried and were not successful in '93-'94," Clinton told moderator Charlie Rose. "And as we all know, the problems of the uninsured and the underinsured, the pressures on doctors and nurses and hospitals, the loss of jobs with employers struggling to maintain health insurance is all much worse than it was when we were trying to do this before."

Clinton said she will announce her plan on Monday. The New York senator said she has already outlined two parts of her health care plan: lowering costs and improving health care quality. But the issue of universal coverage is more of a political flashpoint for Clinton, who saw her health care plan as first lady defeated in 1994.

Clinton's chief rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards, have already announced their health care plans.

Last week Edwards' campaign manager David Bonior told CNN that Clinton "failed" at enacting her health care plan in 1993.

"She hasn't come up with a health care plan since," Bonior charged.

– CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby