Super Tuesday is only a handful of days away. Do you know who you are going to vote for?

Unfortunately, I missed the past couple debates. So to help anyone like me get up to speed, below are excerpts about health care from the Democratic debate last night.

(Excerpts from the last Republican debate will be in my next post.)

Two aspects of this health care debate that were touched upon were mandating health coverage and how the candidates' health plans would be paid for.

Should health care be mandated? What should the penalty be for not being covered?

And where should the money for health reform come from?

Here are some sites to go to if you want to know more about the candidates' plans:
Sen. Barack Obama's plan for health care reform
Sen. Hillary Clinton's plan for health care reform
Side-by-side summary on all the proposals from the Kaiser Family Foundation
"Stance at a glance" from WebMD
Comparison of the plans from The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
Comparison of plans from the Association of Health Care Journalists
 

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON, D-NEW YORK: But we do have differences and let me mention a couple. First, on health care. I believe absolutely passionately that we must have universal health care. It is a moral responsibility and a right for our country, and...

(APPLAUSE)

... and I have put forth a plan similar to what Senator Edwards had before he left the race that would move us to universal health care.

*****

SEN. BARACK OBAMA, D-ILLINOIS: Well, I actually think that a couple of the ones that Hillary mentioned are genuine policy differences that are worthy of debate.

Let's take health care. About 95 percent of our plans are similar. We both set up a government plan that would allow people who otherwise don't have health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, like my mother had, or at least what the insurance said was a pre-existing condition, let them get health insurance.

We both want to emphasize prevention, because we've got to do something about ever escalating costs and we don't want children, who I meet all the time, going to emergency rooms for treatable illnesses like asthma.

It is true we've got a policy difference, because my view is that the reason people don't have health care, and I meet them all the time, in South Carolina, a mother whose child has cerebral palsy and could not get insurance for and started crying during a town hall meeting, and Hillary, I'm sure, has had the same experiences.

What they're struggling with is they can't afford the health care. And so I emphasize reducing costs. My belief is that if we make it affordable, if we provide subsidies to those who can't afford it, they will buy it.

Senator Clinton has a different approach. She believes that we have to force people who don't have health insurance to buy it. Otherwise, there will be a lot of people who don't get it.

I don't see those folks. And I think that it is important for us to recognize that if, in fact, you are going to mandate the purchase of insurance and it's not affordable, then there's going to have to be some enforcement mechanism that the government uses. And they may charge people who already don't have health care fines, or have to take it out of their paychecks. And that, I don't think, is helping those without health insurance. That is a genuine difference.

*****

JEANNE CUMMINGS, POLITICO: You both mentioned that health care is a priority for your party, but the truth is that most Democrats really do want full coverage, everybody covered.

Now, Senator Obama, this is a question for you. Under your plan, which is voluntary, it creates incentives for people to buy, but still is voluntary. There would be around -- about 15 million people who would still not be covered.

Now, why is your plan superior to hers?

OBAMA: Well, understand who we're talking about here. Every expert who looks at it says anybody who wants health care will be able to get health care under my plan. There won't be anybody out there who wants health care who will not be able to get it. That's point number one.

So the estimate is -- this is where the 15 million figure comes in -- is that there are 15 million people who don't want health care. That's the argument.

Now, first of all, I dispute that there are 15 million people out there who don't want it. I believe that there are people who can't afford it, and if we provide them enough subsidies, they will purchase it. Number one.

Number two, I mandate coverage for all children.

Number three, I say that young people, who are the most likely to be healthy but think they are invulnerable -- and decide I don't need health care -- what I'm saying is that insurance companies and my plan as well will allow people up to 25 years old to be covered under their parents' plan.

So, as a consequence, I don't believe that there will be 15 million out there.

Now, under any mandate, you are going to have problems with people who don't end up having health coverage. Massachusetts right now embarked on an experiment where they mandated coverage.

And, by the way, I want to congratulate Governor Schwarzenegger and the speaker and others who have been trying to do this in California, but I know that those who have looked at it understand, you can mandate it, but there's still going to be people who can't afford it. And if they cannot afford it, then the question is, what are you going to do about it?

Are you going to fine them? Are you going to garnish their wages?

You know, those are questions that Senator Clinton has not answered with respect to her plan, but I think we can anticipate that there would also be people potentially who are not covered and are actually hurt if they have a mandate imposed on them.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN: All right.

Senator Clinton, this is a substantive difference on health care between the two of you. Go ahead and respond.

CLINTON: Well, let me start by saying that this is the passionate cause of my public service.

I started trying to expand health care many years ago, first to children, then to rural areas in Arkansas, and obviously tackled it during my husband's administration. And the reason why I have designed a plan that, number one, tells people, if you have health insurance and you are happy with it, nothing changes, is because we want to maximize choice for people.

So, if you are satisfied, you're not one of the people who will necessarily, at this time, take advantage of what I'm offering. But if you are uninsured or underinsured, we will open the congressional health plan to you.

And contrary to...

(APPLAUSE)

Contrary to the description that Barack just gave, we actually will make it affordable for everyone, because my plan lowers costs aggressively, which is important for us all; improves quality for everyone, which is essential. And the way it covers all of those who wish to participate in the congressional plan is that it will provide subsidies, and it will also cap premiums, something that is really important, because we want to make sure that it is affordable for all.

So, when you draw the distinction that, "Well, it's not affordable, therefore people will have to be made to get it," well, the fact is, it has been designed to be affordable with health care tax credits.

And it's also important to recognize that right now, there are people who could afford health care, and they are not all young, they're people who just don't feel they have to accept that responsibility. There are many states which give families the option of keeping children up until 25 on their policies, but their rates of uninsurance are still very high.

We cannot get to universal health care, which I believe is both a core Democratic value and imperative for our country, if we don't do one of three things. Either you can have a single payer system, or -- which, I know, a lot of people favor, but for many reasons, is difficult to achieve. Or, you can mandate employers. Well, that's also very controversial. Or, you can do what I am proposing, which is to have shared responsibility.

Now, in Barack's plan, he very clearly says he will mandate that parents get health insurance for their children. So it's not that he is against mandatory provisions, it's that he doesn't think it would be politically acceptable to require that for everyone.

I just disagree with that. I think we as Democrats have to be willing to fight for universal health care.

(APPLAUSE)

And what I've concluded, when I was looking at this -- because I got the same kind of advice, which was, it's controversial, you'll run into all of this buzz saw, and I said, been there, done that. But if you don't start by saying, you're going to achieve universal health care, you will be nibbled to death.

And I think it's imperative that, as we move forward in this debate and into the campaign, that we recognize what both John Edwards and I did, that you have to bite this bullet. You have to say, yes, we are going to try to get universal health care. What I have designed makes it affordable, provides premium caps so it's never

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: Senator Obama, let me just fine-tune the question, because I know you want to respond.

On this issue of mandates, those who don't, whether it's 10 million or 15 million, those who could afford it but don't wind up buying health insurance for one reason or another, they wind up getting sick, they go to an emergency room, all of us wind up paying for their health care. That's the biggest criticism that's been leveled at your plan.

OBAMA: If people are gaming the system, there are ways we can address that. By, for example, making them pay some of the back premiums for not having gotten it in the first place.

But understand that, number one, Hillary says that she's got enough subsidies. Well, we priced out both our plan and Senator Clinton's plan, and some of the subsidies are not going to be sufficient. Point number one.

Point number two is that I am actually not interested in just capping premiums. I want to lower premiums by about an average of $2,500 per family per year, because people right now cannot afford it.

I can't tell you how many folks I meet who have premiums that are so high that essentially they don't have health insurance, they have house insurance. What they do is...

(APPLAUSE)

... they have a $10,000 deductible, or what have you, to try to reduce costs. They never go to a doctor. And that ends up something that we pay for, so I'm trying to reduce premiums for all families.

But the last point I want to make has to do with how we're going to actually get this plan done. You know, Ted Kennedy said that he is confident that we will get universal health care with me as president, and he's been working on it longer than I think about than anybody.

But he's gone through 12 of these plans, and each time they have failed. And part of the reason, I think, that they have failed is we have not been able to bring Democrats, Republicans together to get it done.

(APPLAUSE)

That's what I did in Illinois, to provide insurance for people who did not have it. That's what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are.

(APPLAUSE)

Because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process. And overcoming the special interests and the lobbyists who -- Senator Clinton is right. They will resist anything that we try to do. My plan, her plan, they will try to resist.

And the antidote to that is making sure that the American people understand what is at stake. I am absolutely committed to making sure that anybody in America who needs health care is going to get it.

BLITZER: I just want to be precise, and I'll let Senator Clinton respond. But you say broadcast on C-SPAN these deliberations. Is that a swipe at Senator Clinton because...

OBAMA: No, it's not a swipe. This is something that I've been talking about consistently. What I want to do is increase transparency and accountability to offset the power of the special interests and the lobbyists.

(APPLAUSE)

If a drug company -- if the drug companies or a member of Congress who's carrying water for the drug companies wants to argue that we should not negotiate for the cheapest available price on drugs, then I want them to make that argument in front of the American people.

And I will have experts who explain that, in fact, it is legitimate for drug companies to make profits, but they are making outsized profits on the backs of senior citizens who need those prescription drugs. And that is an argument that the American people have to be involved with, otherwise we're not going to get any plan through.

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: Senator Clinton, we remember in '93, when you were formulating your health care plan, it was done in secret.

CLINTON: Well, it was an effort to try to begin this conversation, which we're now continuing. It has been a difficult conversation. There have been a lot of efforts.

And I'm proud that one of the efforts I was involved in 10 years ago resulted in the Children's Health Insurance Program. We now have a million children in California...

(APPLAUSE)

... who every month get health insurance because of that bipartisan effort. We obviously are running into the presidential veto and not being able to expand it.

But this issue is so important, and I just want to underscore three really critical points.

First of all, I have said in my plan that we have to regulate the health insurance industry differently. We have to say to them that they can no longer deny coverage to anyone and they have to cover everyone, including every pre-existing condition.

(APPLAUSE)

And they have to compete on cost and quality, instead of the way they compete now, which is to try to cherry-pick people, and only insure the healthy, and make it so costly for people with diabetes or cancer or some other chronic condition.

Secondly, we've got to make it clear to the drug companies that they do deserve to be part of the solution, because we all benefit from the life-saving remedies they come up with, but we pay for it many times over.

It is American taxpayers who pay for the research. It is American taxpayers who pay for a lot of the clinical studies. That's why, while we're looking at getting to universal health care, we also have to give Medicare the right to negotiate with drug companies to get the price down, to begin to rein in those costs across the board.

(APPLAUSE)

And, finally, it is so important that, as Democrats, we carry the banner of universal health care. The health insurance industry is very clever and extremely well-funded.

I know this. I had $300 million of incoming advertising and attacks during our efforts back in '93 and '94. And one of the reasons why I've designed the plan that I have put forward now is because I learned a lot about what people want, what people are willing to accept, and how we get the political process to work.

And, certainly, it is important that the president come up with the plan, but we'll have to persuade Congress to put all of those deliberations on C-SPAN. Now, I think we might be able to do that, but that's a little heavier lift than what the president is going to propose, because what happens is we have to have a coalition.

And I think the plan that I have proposed is if you take business, which pays the costs and wants to get those costs down, take labor that has to negotiate over health care instead of wages, take doctors, nurses, hospitals who want to get back into the business of taking care of people instead of working for insurance companies, I think we will have a coalition that can withstand the health insurance...

BLITZER: Thank you.

CLINTON: ... and the drug companies.

BLITZER: Thank you, Senator.

CLINTON: And that's what I intend to do.

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: All right. The next question, a related question, from Doyle.

DOYLE MCMANUS, L.A. TIMES: Senator Obama, one other thing both of your health insurance proposals have in common is they would cost billions of dollars in new spending and both of you have proposed raising taxes on a lot on Americans to pay for that and for other proposals.

Well, now, you know what's going to happen this fall in the general election campaign. The Republicans are going to call you "tax-and-spend" liberal Democrats, and that's a charge that's been effective in the past.

How are you going to counter that charge?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, I don't think the Republicans are going to be in a real strong position to argue fiscal responsibility, when they have added $4 trillion or $5 trillion...

(APPLAUSE)

... worth of national debt. I am happy to have that argument.

If John McCain, for example, is the nominee, I respect that John McCain, in the first two rounds of Bush tax cuts, said it is irresponsible that we have never before cut taxes at the same time as we're going into war.

And somewhere along the line, the straight talk express lost some wheels and now he is in favor of extending Bush tax cuts that went to some of the wealthiest Americans who don't need them and we're not even asking for them.

So I've already said a sizeable portion of my health care plan will be paid for because we emphasize savings. We invest in prevention.

So that as I said before, the chronically ill that account for 20 percent -- or the 20 percent of chronically ill patients that account for 80 percent of the costs, that they're getting better treatment. We are actually paying for a dietitian for people to lose weight as opposed to paying for the $30,000 foot amputation. That will save us money.

We can conservatively save...

(APPLAUSE)

... $100 billion to $150 billion a year under my plan. That pays for part of it.

Part of it is paid for by rolling back the Bush tax cuts on the top one percent.

Now...

(APPLAUSE)

So my plan is paid for. But one thing that I think we're going to have to do as Democrats when we go after the Republicans is -- the question is not tax cuts, tax hikes. The question is who are the tax cuts for, who are the tax hikes imposed upon.

What we have had right now is a situation where we've cut taxes for people who don't need them. Warren Buffett has said, "You know, I made $46 million last year. It was a bad year for me. But I can still afford to pay more than my secretary, who has a higher tax rate than I do."

That is not fair and I want to change that.

We've got $1 trillion worth of corporate tax loopholes and tax havens and I've said I will close those and I will give tax cuts to people making $75,000 or less by offsetting their payroll tax. Senior citizens making less than $50,000 a year, we want to eliminate taxes for them.

So the question is can we restore a sense of balance to our economy and make sure that those of us who are blessed and fortunate and have thrived in this economy, in this global economy, that we can afford to pay a little bit more so that that child in east Los Angeles who is in a crumbling school, with teachers that are having to dig into their own pockets for school supplies, that they are having a chance at the American dream, as well.

(APPLAUSE)

I'm happy to have that argument.

BLITZER: Senator Clinton, your health care plan, it is estimated, will cost $110 billion annually. You want to tax the rich to pay for that, is that what you're saying?

CLINTON: Well, let me say that the way I would pay for this is to take the Bush tax cuts that are set to expire on people making more than $250,000 a year. That would raise about $55 billion and I would put that into the subsidies for the health care tax credit, so that people would be able to afford the health care that we are offering.

The other $55 billion would come from the modernization and the efficiencies that I believe we can obtain. We spend more money than anybody in the world on health care and there is no end in sight.

Yet, we don't get the best results. We don't have the longest life span. We don't have the best infant mortality rates.

We could do so much better. And here are some of the ideas that I have put on the table.

Number one, the Bush administration has given enormous tax giveaways to HMOs and drug companies under the Medicare prescription Part D program, under the HMO program in Medicare. I would rein those in. They are not being earned. They do not produce the results that are supposedly being touted by the Bush administration.

I would also move for electronic medical records, something that I have worked on for nearly five years on a bipartisan basis. Started with Newt Gingrich and Bill Frist. We passed my legislation through the Senate a year ago. Didn't get it through the Republican House. Now we're going to try again in the Democratic Congress.

If we had electronic medical records, according to RAND Corporation -- hardly a bastion of liberal thinking...

(LAUGHTER)

... they have said we would save $77 billion a year. That money can be put into prevention. It could be put into chronic care management. It can be put into making sure that our health care system has enough access so that if you are in a rural community somewhere in California or somewhere in Tennessee or somewhere in Georgia, you'll have access to health care. If you are in an inner- city area and you see your hospital, like the Drew Medical Center, closed on you, then you are going to have a place once again where you can get health care in the immediate area.

So we can begin to be more effective and more sensible about how we cover everybody, and use the money from the top-end tax cults and from modernizing the system.