Over the next 10 years, Thorpe calculated, Clark's plan would cost $772 billion. That's more than Edwards' (nearly $600 billion) and Lieberman's ($747 billion), but less than Kerry's and Dean's (both around $900 billion).
Among the major candidates, Gephardt has offered the most expensive plan, proposing generous tax subsidies for employers to cover their workers at a cost of about $2.5 trillion over 10 years, according to Thorpe.
But those comparisons are somewhat misleading because Clark wouldn't launch his plan until 2006 or fully phase it in until 2008, later than some of his rivals' proposals. By Thorpe's calculations, the Clark plan's annual cost in 2011 would be just over $122 billion a year, nearly as much as Dean's ($125 billion) and Kerry's ($127 billion), more than Lieberman's ($111 billion), considerably more than Edwards' ($90.2 billion), and much less than Gephardt's (about $300 billion a year by then.)
Longshot Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio is promoting a single-payer government-run plan that would cover all of the uninsured at an estimated annual cost of about $600 billion.
Thorpe said that aside from Gephardt and Kucinich, the plans offered by the Democratic candidates "are using the same basic tools, so on the basis of each newly insured person, the cost should be pretty similar."
Clark's aides, though, said they believe the cost-control elements in his proposal -- particularly the commission to study prevention and disease management -- could produce savings of $125 billion over the next decade, reducing his plan's overall cost below that of almost all of his rivals.
