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Kerry says health care system 'badly broken'

EDINBORO, Pa. - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Monday hailed his health care plan as the prescription for cutting soaring premiums and reducing fraud and waste, calling the system under President Bush "badly broken."

Focusing on health care in a weeklong swing to battleground states, Kerry complained that insurance companies are posting record profits while consumer costs and the expense for employers have reached crisis proportions.

"Today, regular checkups are emptying family checkbooks," Kerry told nursing students at Pennsylvania's Edinboro University.

The campaign offered statistics to back up his complaints: Total family premiums have risen more than $2,700 in four years, a rate Kerry said was four times faster than that for workers' earnings.

Kerry has offered a health care plan that calls for repealing Bush's tax cut for Americans making more than $200,000 annually, and using the money to bolster health care. He would have the federal government assume the costs of the most catastrophic cases.

HOLLIS, N.H. - Underscoring New Hampshire's value as an election-year battleground state, Vice President Dick Cheney Monday toured a once-struggling, now-expanding manufacturing business to showcase the last three years of White House economic policies.

In 12 minutes of remarks to 150 people at Diamond Casting & Machine Co., Cheney credited "the Bush tax cuts" and the Republican-led Congress with lowering federal taxes for 120,000 business owners and 525,000 income-tax filers in the Granite State.

"America's economy is moving in the right direction - don't let anyone tell you otherwise," Cheney said.

AUSTIN - Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader on Monday sued Texas' top election official to try to get onto the state's ballot, claiming that a petition signature requirement is unconstitutional.

Nader's campaign also applied for a place on the general election ballot, but said it would not submit the more than 50,000 voter signatures it had collected. Ballot access rules required the campaign to collect at least 64,076 signatures by 6 p.m. Monday from registered voters who did not vote in this year's Democratic or Republican primaries.