Thursday, September 4, 2008

How does Senator Obama describe his health plan?

Sen. Obama's health plan is set out in two documents; closely related are a FAQ document and the speech Sen. Obama gave when he released his plan.

The shorter, more bullet-point version is "Plan for a Healthy America."
I downloaded my copy in the Spring, and while the document has remained about the same, there's been at least one change, a topic for a later post.

There is also "Barack Obama's Plan for a Healthy America," a document whose file name, "HealthPlanFull," explains what it is.

If you want the FAQs, they are also available.

Senator Obama announced his plan in a speech entitled "Cutting Costs and Covering America: A 21st Century Health Care System," delivered on May 29, 2007, at the University of Iowa.

That's about it for authoritative documents that lay out the plan. The documents from the campaign do not provide the detail to answer questions like "How much will the plan cost?" and "How many people will get assistance and how much will they get?" The best clues for answering this sort of question come from a document that I'd have to call semi-authoritative. It isn't from the campaign. Rather, it comes from three advisers to the campaign (and opens "The Obama campaign asked us...") It's a memo to "Interested Parties" and the only place to find what I would describe as policy analysis rather than policy description that traces back to the Obama campaign.

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