The Candidates on Health Care

Health care has become one of the most important issues this election, consistently ranking among the top issues American's are concerned about. Many voters will make voting decisions based on the health care policies of the candidates. This blog post will focus on providing information on the health care plans and records of the two major presidential candidates.

First, Senator John McCain's health care plan can be found on his campaign web site here. His Senate record and speeches related to health care issues can be found on his Senate web site here.

Your Candidates-Your Health is a voter guide questionnaire that describes each candidate's views and proposals regarding health issues in our country. Senator McCain's stance on these questions can be found on his profile page here.

Senator Barack Obama's health care plan can be found on his campaign web site here. Senator Obama's stance on health care issues while in the Senate can be found at his Senate web page here. Senator Obama's survey responses to the Your Candidates-Your Health questionnaire can be found at his profile page here.

Finding an objective analysis of each candidate's health care positions can be difficult. However, there are a few good sources that have been cited frequently by health experts. One source was cited by an informative reader of this blog. The source is a policy analysis report by the Commonwealth Fund, which can be found on this web page. The report was recently written and provides detailed information regarding both candidates' plans, including an interactive summary comparison. Another great source was found in The New England Journal of Medicine, by Dr. Jonathan Oberlander. The article discusses some of the major philosophical and practical differences between the health care plans of the two major presidential candidates. The full-text of the article can be found on their Election 2008 perspective page.

I encourage readers to comment on this section with links and sources they have on the health care proposals of either candidate. I enjoy reading your comments and I think your posts will create an even better resource of health information for our community.

Below is an Associated Press video of the two candidates talking about health care during the second debate.