Richardson unveils mandatory healthcare plan

WASHINGTON -- Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico became the latest presidential contender yesterday to embrace a requirement that all Americans get health insurance, releasing a plan he said would cut healthcare costs and cover all Americans without raising taxes.

Richardson's plan would expand existing programs to cover more young people, those near retirement, and veterans. It would offer Medicare as a choice to Americans age 55 to 64, and would expand Medicaid and SCHIP coverage for children in poor families. Young adults as old as 25 would have the option of staying in their parents' healthcare plans. And a new "Heroes Health Card" would be offered to veterans -- assuring them, the Democratic governor said, of less bureaucracy and "the same decent medical coverage that so many of us civilians take for granted."

Mandatory health insurance is meant to lower the high cost of paying for emergency healthcare for the nation's 47 million uninsured. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, now a GOP contender for president, was an architect of the Massachusetts plan, and former North Carolina senator John Edwards, a Democrat, has also released a plan that seeks to provide insurance for all Americans.

But Richardson contends he would not need to raise taxes to pay for his plan. Instead, he said, he would require insurance companies to spend less on administration, setting aside at least 85 percent of spending for direct care. Credit card companies would be limited in the amount of interest they could charge for costs related to medical care.

Richardson also would allow Medicare to negotiate directly with drug companies in an effort to lower prices, an idea rejected by Congress when it passed a Medicare prescription drug coverage plan in late 2003.

SUSAN MILLIGAN

NASHVILLE -- A Google description of Fred Thompson's redesigned website is jumping the gun on the status of the actor-politician's presidential campaign, his spokeswoman said yesterday.

Type the words "Friends of Fred Thompson" into Google, and the first link returned by the search engine describes the webpage as the "Official site of Fred Thompson for President Exploratory Committee."

An exploratory committee would be a major step between Thompson's less formal "testing the waters" committee and an official bid for the Republican nomination. But Thompson's spokeswoman, Linda Rozett, said, "We are definitely not an exploratory committee; we are definitely a testing-the-waters committee."

The redesigned website launched Monday features written and video commentary from the former Tennessee senator, along with new fund-raising and volunteering tools.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

DAVENPORT, Iowa -- Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said yesterday that whether he was a practicing Catholic was a personal matter as he declined to answer questions about his religion.

Addressing a town hall meeting in Iowa, the former New York mayor was asked whether he considered himself a "traditional, practicing Roman Catholic" and was pressed to discuss the role his faith played in making decisions on issues such as abortion.

"My religious affiliation, my religious practices, and the degree to which I am a good or not so good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests," Giuliani said. "That would be a much better way to discuss it. That's a personal discussion and they have a much better sense of how good a Catholic I am or how bad a Catholic I am."

Giuliani is alone among the major Republican candidates in favoring abortion rights, which the Catholic Church opposes.

ASSOCIATED PRESS