Kerry touts his health insurance plan at Jacksonville rally

JACKSONVILLE - Swooping into a Florida Republican stronghold, John Kerry Tuesday accused President Bush of ignoring a national health care crisis.

The Democratic presidential candidate kicked off a two-day Florida swing with a riverfront rally in Jacksonville, saying he wanted to discard partisan labels and bring common-sense values back to America.

"We cannot be strong if we're not strong at home," the Massachusetts senator said to cheers from a crowd of nearly 1,000. "We've got to lower the cost of health care in the United States and make our companies more competitive. (Bush) doesn't have a plan. He's had four years to have a plan. I have a plan."

Armed with a batch of Florida-specific health coverage statistics (223,000 Floridians have lost health insurance coverage since 2000; 2.8-million Floridians have no health insurance), Kerry cast his health care proposal as part of a broader plan to strengthen the economy.

Kerry would roll back Bush's tax cuts for people earning more than $200,000 per year to pay for his health care plan, estimated to cost $653-billion over 10 years. His campaign estimates it would cover 27-million of the 43-million Americans currently uninsured, including more than 1.8-million Floridians.

Among elements of the plan:

- A government insurance pool to cover high-risk patients.

- For businesses offering insurance coverage to all employees, the government would cover catastrophic medical expenses exceeding $50,000 a year per person. Kerry estimates that would save families $1,000 a year in premiums.

- Patients would be barred from filing a malpractice claim until a specialist determined it had some merit.

- Prescription drugs could be reimported from Canada.

Republican critics say Kerry's plan would merely shift health care expenses from the private sector to taxpayers. Kerry, they say, was no leader on health care issues during his four Senate terms.

"All he had to do was put a bill in the hopper over the last 20 years which would allow us to clearly see what it was he wanted. But no. Now that he's running for president, he has all these ideas on health care," Republican House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas of California said in a conference call with reporters Monday.

Flying overhead during Kerry's appearance, a small plane pulled a banner: "Florida is Bush Country."

The Jacksonville area is a Republican stronghold that Democratic candidate Al Gore never visited in 2000 and that Bush won by more than 16 percentage points.

But it also has proven to be a key fundraising area for Kerry, and it has a large and Democratic African-American population that could make the difference in a close race. In 2000, about 27,000 votes were tossed out because of ballot problems, and more than half came from precincts that voted overwhelmingly for Gore.

Looking at the crowd, Kerry quipped, "This must be about one quarter of the votes they didn't count here last time."

Today Kerry campaigns in Orlando, holding a town hall-style meeting on health care.

- Adam C. Smith can be reached at 727 893-8241 or adam@sptimes.com

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