Clinton goes on offensive on health care

Hillary Clinton today launched one of her most pointed attacks yet against chief rival Barack Obama, charging that his health care plan would leave millions of uninsured Americans "virtually invisible."

Continuing her aggressive new tack against her Democratic primary opponents, Clinton said that Obama, by not mandating that individuals have health insurance, would fall woefully short of the goal of universal coverage that all the leading Democrats share.

The New York senator argued that Obama's plan would leave uninsured as many as 15 million of the estimate 47 million Americans without coverage, and she asked Iowa voters to imagine the outrage had presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson created Social Security or Medicare but not offered them to all seniors.

"If you don't start with the goal of covering everybody, you'll never get there," Clinton said at Des Moines Area Community College in Ankeny. "I don't understand why we have this difference on the Democratic side. If anything, Democrats should stand for universal health care."

Obama, in a conference call with reporters before Clinton's speech, said that he will cover all Americans by ensuring that health coverage is affordable.

"I believe that the reason people don't have health care is because they can't afford it, not because they don't want it," the Illinois senator said, going on to say that while several Democratic candidates had worthy plans, the question is, "Who's actually going to be able to deliver on this."

The back-and-forth between Clinton and Obama over their health care proposals, which began at the last Democratic debate two weeks ago, illustrates the heightened intensity of the party's primary race, particularly in Iowa, which holds its caucuses in just five weeks.

Over the last two weeks, Clinton has criticized Obama and Former North Carolina senator John Edwards on foreign policy experience, Social Security, and other issues with a directness that would have been unthinkable a month ago, before her lead narrowed nationally and in key states. Clinton lamented in the last debate what she called mud-throwing among Democrats, but told CBS anchor Katie Couric this week: "After you've been attacked as often as I have from several of my opponents, you can't just absorb it. You have to respond."

The stakes on health care could hardly be higher, with polls showing that Democratic voters care more about that issue than any other.