Health Care Forum

If anyone wants to know why I qualify my support for Obama as "tentative," look no further than the SEIU health care forum, where it sounds like his rhetoric was very expansive but his positions simultaneously all over the map and his specifics amount to some efficiency issues and getting employers to pay into a pool if they don't provide adequate coverage. That said, I don't spend that much time on the exact details of a candidate's positions at this point, which may or may not be what they propose in office and what then comes out of Congress when all is said and done. Obama does seem like he can move the debate leftward, which I think is important. On the other hand, Richardson, my back-up favorite, has a lot of specific ideas, but his pitch is very much in the Clinton/Kerry mode, and it's not clear if they move the debate at all. Among the top tier of candidates, only Edwards has the real goods on this issue, with Kucinich and Gravel taking the single-payer position among the minor candidates.