Clark plan focuses on preventive treatment
DURHAM, N.H. -- Retired Army General Wesley K. Clark unveiled a $695 billion health care proposal yesterday that would emphasize preventive care, offer universal coverage for young people through age 22, and provide greater access to coverage for adults.
His speech here was the third in a series Clark has given, as he aims to broaden his profile beyond foreign policy expertise. Aides say that Clark started devising a health care platform soon after he entering the race last month, brainstorming with advisers, throwing out ideas he had seen in the military, and meeting with policy specialists, some of whom worked on health care policy in the Clinton administration.
Clark's plan bears little resemblance to Clinton's ill-fated universal health care proposals. It incorporates many pieces of proposals found on the think-tank circuit and in the campaigns of other Democratic candidates.
Like Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, whose health care plan would insure all young people up to 21, Clark says his plan would grant universal health care to children through the age of 22, when, he says, most Americans have gone through college.
Both candidates would provide the coverage in the form of a progressive tax credit -- available for people who earn up to 500 percent of the poverty limit or $90,000 for a family of four -- which could be used toward health care coverage.
Like the proposals of several other candidates, Clark's plan would allow some Americans to purchase coverage from a health care program available to federal employees.
Another feature of Clark's plan is a proposed independent commission that would determine the value of health care services and emphasize preventive treatment, modeled, he said, on the Army's emphasis on preventive care.
He said he would pay for the plan through savings from repealing the Bush tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, eliminating some duplicate government programs, and instituting competitive bidding for rebuilding Iraq.
In a speech in Washington, Clark blamed President Bush for the intelligence failures that contributed to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Associated Press reported.
"There is no way this administration can walk away from its responsibility for 9/11," Clark said at a conference on "New American Strategies for Security and Peace." "You can't blame something like this on lower-level intelligence officers, however badly they communicated memos with each other. . . . The buck rests with the commander in chief, right on George W. Bush's desk."
