EDINBORO, Pa. — Saying the Bush administration had failed to react to spiraling health care premiums, Sen. John Kerry vowed on Monday to cut those costs by about 10 percent, or $1,000, per family.
"Mine is a plan that will cut soaring premiums, cut the waste, cut the greed, and cut Americans a good deal," Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, told several hundred people, of his proposal to have the federal government assume the responsibility for catastrophic care, a move intended to reduce health insurance costs.
"It's a plan that finally makes our health care affordable, which also makes our businesses all across America more competitive," he said to an audience, which included many nurses and nursing students, at a local university here in Pennsylvania's northwest corner.
With his speech, Kerry began a four-day focus on health care, reprising proposals he made during the Democratic primary even as Washington and much of the rest of the country remained consumed by the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.
While the policy is not new, the senator's approach showed how the Kerry campaign plans to integrate health insurance into its larger economic message about creating jobs.
Instead of talking about universal access and the estimated 43 million uninsured Americans, a rallying cry for liberals concerned about the poor, Kerry emphasized costs, a hot-button issue for both middle-class voters and businesses. He stood in front of a banner emblazoned with the slogan, "Affordable health care means a stronger America."
Sharing hard-luck stories of people he had met at campaign events who lack health insurance or spend their monthly income at their local pharmacy, Kerry added:
"Today, a regular checkup is emptying the family checkbook. Waiting for a doctor's bill is causing as much anxiety as waiting for a diagnosis," Kerry said.
Sarah Bianchi, Kerry's policy director, said, "We're making this a major part of our economic contrast with Bush." The campaign issued a 13-page report filled with grim statistics, most from a recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, to buttress the argument that Bush has done little to control health care costs.
Among the bullet points: premiums, which include the costs paid by both workers and their employees, jumped 41 percent, to $9,549 from $6,772, from 2000 to 2003; premiums increased 13.9 percent last year while earnings rose 3.1 percent; and spending on prescriptions has doubled since 1998 to $184 billion.
The report also said that for the first time, the typical person had to work 31 days to pay for health care, and that America spent more per capita on health care — $4,887 — than nine industrialized democracies, including Switzerland, Canada, Sweden, Japan and New Zealand.
Kerry's focus on health care was amplified by other Democrats, with Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, one of the senator's Democratic primary rivals, accusing the Bush administration of protecting the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries.
The Bush campaign accused Kerry of skipping votes, while he has been campaigning, on both the Medicare prescription drug bill and legislation to curb medical malpractice suits. Bush aides also circulated criticism of Kerry's health care plan previously made by Gephardt.
Responding to Kerry, Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., said in the Bush campaign's daily conference call, that "the president with his leadership has tried to address some of the areas where spiraling costs occur." Thomas said many indicators cited by the Democrats had been rising steadily for 10 or 20 years. Kerry's plan "isn't reducing the cost," he said, "it's simply shifting from one pocket, payment at work, to the other pocket, payment in taxes."
Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's communications director, noted that the Democrat had returned to Capitol Hill to try to block the Bush administration's prescription drug bill, but "when that effort failed, and it was clear the bill would pass, Kerry felt it was more important to get back on the campaign trail and talk to seniors about their needs and how to address those needs."
Kerry accused the Bush administration of lacking a plan to reduce costs or expand health insurance coverage, saying, "You almost never hear the words 'health care' come out of the president's mouth."
In contrast, Kerry plans to talk about little else this week, here in Pennsylvania and in Kentucky, Florida and Arkansas.