WASHINGTON — Sen. Joe Lieberman pledged Tuesday to offer every American affordable health insurance from birth to age 25, part of a $747-billion health-care initiative he unveiled to counter plans already announced by several of his rivals for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
Aiming for the support of tens of millions of Americans who lack health insurance or fear losing it, Lieberman said his plan would extend coverage to 31.6 million uninsured people within a decade -- at less expense to the government than other Democratic candidates have proposed.
His program would create a new universal health program called "Medikids," meant to guarantee coverage for the estimated 9 million children who are uninsured.
"When I'm president, newborn babies won't go home just with a name and a birth certificate," Lieberman said in a speech at an elementary school in Silver Spring, Md., just outside Washington. "All American children -- rich or poor -- will have health insurance that stays with them from the moment they're born, all the way to age 25."
With his announcement, the senator from Connecticut became the fifth prominent Democratic candidate to offer a comprehensive health-care plan. That all but ensures that whoever emerges as the party's nominee will have a significant health-care platform -- far more ambitious, and costly, than anything President Bush has proposed. Lieberman's campaign estimated his plan would cost $747 billion over 10 years.
Over that same period, a proposal by Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina would cost about $590 billion, while plans by Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean would cost $895 billion and $932 billion, respectively. On the high end, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri would spend $2.5 trillion over 10 years on a plan he says would guarantee health care and stimulate the economy.
At minimum, all five plans aim to cut in half the number of Americans without health insurance, now estimated at 41 million. Lieberman, Gephardt and Dean aim to slash that figure even further, each promising to help more than 30 million Americans gain coverage.
"They're all serious plans," said Kenneth E. Thorpe, a health policy expert at Emory University who worked in the Clinton administration and who has studied the proposals. "They're all fairly expansive, big attempts to try to make a dent in this uninsured problem."
