Presidential Health Care Debat

The candidates' early emphasis on health care is a promising start to the presidential race.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama opened his historic race for the presidency last week in Southwest Virginia with a promise: affordable health care for all.
A sign in front of him stated the pledge as he spoke before an enthusiastic crowd in Bristol. He talked at length about his plan for universal health insurance coverage.
John McCain's campaign quickly fired a shot at it and countered with the presumptive Republican nominee's ideas for health care reform.
Fantastic.
The candidates need to pound this issue hard -- not so much to work out details as to give it the momentum it must have in January, when a new president takes office. He will have to persuade Congress to act so that all Americans are assured access to health care.
Voters have heard the promise before. The Clinton administration tried to deliver on it and failed. The urgency has grown only greater in the intervening years.
Obama says he will accept no campaign contributions from registered lobbyists or political action committees -- part of the change he promises in Washington's status quo. Commendable. By that he is saying that on a host of seemingly intractable problems, such as health care for all, he will put the broader interests of society over the special interests of big donors.
But only Congress can enact laws that might resolve these issues, and members of Congress have made no such pledge.
To pass landmark health care legislation, lawmakers will have to see in the November election results a voter mandate. Only then will the next president be able to lead a reform movement and succeed.
America is facing peril on many fronts this election year: It is bogged down in war, reeling from high gasoline prices, worrying seriously at last about climate change. And looming over all, still too little noticed, the Bush White House's extraordinary claims to power. They threaten the Constitution's protections that guard the people against government abuses and their government against an imperial presidency.
Among its litany of new ills, the chronic crisis of having hundreds of millions of Americans uninsured and underinsured should rank high on voters' agenda. Even then, comprehensive reform will be a daunting challenge.
Charles Edwards, a 95-year-old from Union Hall, went to Bristol Thursday to give Obama a maple walking stick and, unwittingly, some good medicine for the campaign.
"If members of Congress don't pass my health care bill, I'm ready," the candidate joked. "I'll whup 'em."
They're due for a lickin'.

Taken from the Roanoke Times