Republican Presidential Candidates Discuss Health Care, Other Issues Related to Hispanics During Debate

Seven Republican presidential candidates on Sunday at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla., discussed health care during a Spanish-language debate co-sponsored by the university and Univision that focused on issues related to Hispanics, the Wall Street Journal reports (Meckler [1], Wall Street Journal, 12/10). The debate in large part focused on immigration, but some of the candidates discussed health care. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee criticized filmmaker Michael Moore for claims in his documentary "Sicko" that Cuba has a higher-quality health care system than the U.S. "I don't mind shipping him down there, but the rest of us I'd like to get health care right here," he said (Dinan, Washington Times, 12/10).

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney cited the need to expand health insurance to more U.S. residents to improve access to care. He said, "The best kind of prevention you can have in health care is to have a doctor. And if someone doesn't have a doctor, doesn't have a clinic they can go to, doesn't have health insurance to be able to provide the prescription drugs they need, you can't be healthy." In addition, Romney discussed a recently implemented Massachusetts health insurance law that requires all residents to obtain coverage and provides subsidies for lower-income residents. According to Romney, "It cost us no more money to help people buy insurance policies that they could afford than it was costing us before, handing out free care."

Former Sen. Fred Thompson (Tenn.) cited the need to revise the tax code to expand health insurance to more U.S. residents. U.S. residents "need, through the tax code, ... to have the benefit of buying their own insurance through an open market with more sources, more people offering insurance, lifting regulations to make that happen," he said.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (Calif.), Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) also participated in the debate (AP/Wichita Eagle [1], 12/9).

Former President Clinton Touts Sen. Clinton Health Proposal
Former President Bill Clinton, husband of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), on Saturday in South Carolina promoted her proposal to expand health insurance to all U.S. residents, the AP/Eagle reports. During a speech to a graduate chapter of the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, Bill Clinton said that the proposal would provide health insurance for all 672,000 uninsured South Carolina residents and save the average family in the state about $2,200 in health care costs annually. In addition, Bill Clinton met with several physicians, nurses and administrators from the Medical University of South Carolina Children's Hospital to discuss the proposal. He said, "We need to pass a universal health care program. We have a much better chance to succeed than we did in '93." Bill Clinton added, "It's both morally unacceptable and economically unsustainable to do what we're doing now" (Smith, AP/Wichita Eagle, 12/8).

In related news, Hillary Clinton has launched a new television advertisement in New Hampshire that "sums up the broad themes she has emphasized on the stump," such as health care, according to the AP/Eagle. In the ad, titled "New Beginnings," Hillary Clinton delivers a speech and promises a "new beginning" for health care through her proposal. She says, "It takes strength and experience to bring about change. I have a very clear record of 35 years fighting for children and families, fighting for working people, fighting for our future" (AP/Wichita Eagle [2], 12/9).

Huckabee Says He Will Not 'Recant' 1992 Comments on HIV/AIDS
Huckabee on Sunday said that he will not "recant" statements made in 1992 in which he called for people living with HIV/AIDS to be isolated from the general population, the AP/International Herald Tribune reports. Huckabee -- who made the statements in an Associated Press survey while running for Senate that year -- wrote that in order for the federal government to effectively address the spread of HIV, "we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague." He added in the survey, "It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents" (AP/International Herald Tribune, 12/9). Huckabee in the 1992 survey also said that HIV/AIDS research was receiving too much federal funding, The Politico reports (Allen, The Politico, 12/8).

Huckabee's campaign on Saturday released a statement from him saying that in 1992 there was confusion over how HIV is transmitted. "We now know that the virus that causes AIDS is spread differently, with a lower level of contact than with TB," Huckabee said in the statement, adding, "But looking back almost 20 years, my concern was the uncertain risk to the general population -- if we got it wrong, many people would die needlessly." Huckabee also pledged to make the fight against HIV/AIDS a central part of his presidency if elected (Bacon, Washington Post, 12/9). Huckabee responded to the 1992 Associated Press survey after it was "well established" that HIV could not be spread through casual contact, the New York Times reports (Luo, New York Times, 12/9). Although Huckabee acknowledged the prevailing scientific view in 1992, and since, that HIV is not transmitted through casual contact, he said he was not certain at the time. Huckabee cited a 1991 report of a dentist who infected a patient with HIV -- an "extraordinary case that highlighted the risk of infection through contact with blood or bodily fluids" -- according to the AP/Herald Tribune.

Huckabee in an interview with Fox News Channel's "Fox News Sunday" said, "I still believe this today" that "we were acting more out of political correctness" in responding to HIV/AIDS. He added that his comments were not meant as a call to quarantine HIV-positive people, adding that his idea was not to "lock people up" (AP/International Herald Tribune, 12/9). Huckabee added that he would state his position "a little differently" today, the Wall Street Journal reports (Meckler, Wall Street Journal, 12/10).

A transcript of the "Fox News Sunday" segment is available online.

Editorial, Opinion Piece

• Washington Times: Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) "was the first candidate to offer a plan for health care reform," a proposal that "many suggest is a stepping stone to a single-payer system," a Times editorial writes. According to the editorial, Edwards "has been called a populist by many pundits, but that term is not entirely accurate" because, although "he is certainly proposing many liberal government programs, he does not explicitly attack corporate America or try and create a rift between income classes" (Washington Times, 12/10).
  
  
• Daniel Gallington, Washington Times: A number of presidential candidates have announced proposals to expand health insurance to more U.S. residents, and private health insurers "are licking their chops over national insurance ideas that would have billions of dollars paid to them -- no matter who pays," Gallington, a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, writes in a Times opinion piece. "While the insurance industry certainly won't mind if the federal government makes huge cash payments into their business system, they will mind if the government actually takes over -- or manages -- the health insurance business," Gallington writes, adding, "Therefore -- even if it becomes the cheapest and most efficient way for any part of a new health insurance system to work (for younger people, for example) -- it is unlikely to happen." Gallington writes, "In sum, how will individual voters, taxpayers and health insurance consumers figure in the new universal health insurance debate?" adding, "The short answer is that they won't: Just as the most expensive and least efficient alternatives for our other forms of government-sponsored health insurance ... have prevailed in the past -- they will likely prevail again" (Gallington, Washington Times, 12/9).