Despite polls ranking the healthcare crisis second only to the Iraq War as a concern for voters, few presidential candidates have emerged as champions of healthcare reform.
A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that 44 percent of American voters across party lines said Iraq was their number one concern, followed by healthcare, immigration, national security and education.
On May 29, the Service Employees International Union called for all presidential candidates to publicly release a healthcare plan by August 1. A recent poll of primary and caucus voters conducted by SEIU's Americans for Health Care found healthcare to be the top domestic issue in the presidential campaign. "Voters agree they haven't heard enough from the candidates about healthcare," an SEIU statement said.
Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and former Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson (R) are the exceptions, as all have been vocal on healthcare from early in the race. Obama and Clinton announced plans for universal healthcare coverage as early as January. Thompson said he believes healthcare and energy will be "front and center" to the election.
But a cursory review of other candidates' Web sites reveals that healthcare is a largely neglected issue.
Republican candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was responsible in part for passing a law to provide all Massachusetts residents with health insurance. Yet his campaign Web site highlights issues such immigration, border security and the Iraq War.
Other leading Republican candidates Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani take stands on government spending, lowering taxes, and the Iraq War, but entirely omit healthcare from their sites.
According to Mollyann Brodie, vice president and director of Public Opinion and Media Research for Kaiser, the public is hungry for more discussion of healthcare reform.
"The public shows some appetite for the kind of broader health measures that have largely been absent from the agenda for many years," Brodie said in a statement following the release of Kaiser's December 2006 voter survey.
At an SEIU event hosted Tuesday in Iowa City, Iowa, Obama detailed his reform plan, promising to provide "affordable, comprehensive and portable health coverage" for all Americans. Highlights of Obama's plan also include requiring coverage for preventive services and the use of electronic health records.
If elected, Thompson plans to entirely transform the U.S. healthcare system, he said at an April 11 meeting of the National Coalition on Health Care. His transformation includes a plan that would allow insurance plans to compete over state-established insurable classes of individuals, such as those aged 18-35, to bring down costs and help decrease the number of uninsured.