The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then the presidential campaign, this day after the last debate; the debate itself as seen by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and James Fallows; our own debate over the health care issue; and the latest in Baghdad from Edward Wong of the New York Times.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Bush and Sen. Kerry moved today into the closing stretch of their race for president. Following their final debate last night, each went their separate ways. Mr. Bush flew from Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada, with Sen. John McCain at his side. He brushed aside polls that found Sen. Kerry won all three debates.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: You know, the pundits and the spinners, they all have their opinion, but there is only one opinion that matters, and that's the opinion of the American people on Nov. 2. And I feel great about where we are. There's a lot of enthusiasm for my candidacy. People have seen me lead; they also know that I have got plans for the next four years.

JIM LEHRER: Sen. Kerry was also in Las Vegas today. He gave his own assessment of the campaign, speaking to the American Association of Retired Persons.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: I believe that the president has proven beyond a doubt that he is out of touch with the average middle-class family. He's out of ideas, and he's unwilling to change course. And on Nov. 2, America is going to change course for him!

JIM LEHRER: Sen. Kerry drew fire today from the vice president's family for something he said in last night's debate. He cited their daughter, Mary, in answering whether homosexuality is a choice. He said: "I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you she's being who she was born as." Later, Mrs. Cheney called the remark "a cheap and tawdry political trick." And today, the vice president said: "You saw a man who will do and any anything to get elected, and I am not just speaking as a father here, although I am a pretty angry father." Sen. Kerry released a statement today, saying: "I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue." We'll have more on this campaign day, and the debate, right after this News Summary. The Federal Communications Commission will not block a broadcaster from airing a film critical of John Kerry. FCC Chairman Michael Powell said today doing so would be "an absolute disservice to the first amendment." The documentary criticizes the young Kerry's activities against the Vietnam War. Sinclair broadcasting has said it will run the film on all 62 of its stations, two weeks before the election. In Iraq today, bombers struck inside Baghdad's green zone for the first time, killing four Americans and six Iraqis. The fortified district in the capital houses Iraq's government and U.S. military offices and residences. Apparent suicide attackers set off explosions in a cafe and an outdoor market that cater to westerners. The American victims worked for a security firm. An American journalist reported witness accounts of the bombers talking, shortly before the attacks.

LARRY KAPLOW, Cox Newspapers: One of the men sat down, and they kept a hand on the table and another hand in the bag, in one of the bags. The other man spent most of the time, according to this witness, standing next to him and talking to him very fervently about something they said they didn't overhear. They said afterwards they think it was sort of encouraging him, brainwashing him, coaxing him into blowing himself up.

JIM LEHRER: A group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al- Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the bombings. We'll have more on this story later in the program. Four U.S. soldiers were killed in separate attacks in Baghdad and Ramadi today. And the U.S. military said American planes bombed more sites in Fallujah being used by followers of al-Zarqawi. Hospitals reported at least five people killed. In a related development, a delegation from Fallujah suspended talks with the Iraqi government today. The group rejected demands to hand over al-Zarqawi. Kidnappers in Iraq posted a video on the Internet today that showed them beheading a Turkish hostage. The victim was identified as a truck driver. The same militant group has previously claimed it killed 12 Nepal hostages, and one other Turk. Iraq's president al-Yawer said today the Jan. 31 date for elections is "not sacred." He told an Arabic newspaper: "If we see the elections will be held without security or that the situation will not result in fair, comprehensive elections we will not hesitate to change the date." Al-Yawer is the highest ranking Sunni Muslim in the government. Election officials in Afghanistan began counting ballots today, five days after a landmark presidential election. Early results showed President Karzai winning nearly 60 percent of the vote. The final tally is not expected until the end of the month. The count was delayed to let an independent panel begin looking into charges of voting irregularities. The U.S. Army announced today up to 28 U.S. soldiers could face criminal charges in the deaths of two Afghan prisoners. The Afghans died in December of 2002. Medical reports blamed "blunt force injuries." To date, one American has been charged with assault and dereliction of duty in the deaths. Commanding officers will decide if the remaining 27 face a court martial. The U.S. Treasury Department reported today the federal deficit was $413 billion for the fiscal year just ended. That's $100 billion lower than the forecast last February. Treasury officials said it's because of stronger tax collections and lower spending. Democrats said it's still a record, and cannot be touted as good news. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly 108 points to close at 9,894. The NASDAQ fell more than 17 points to close at 1,903. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: The campaign day; Jamieson and Fallows on the debate; the health care issue; and the bombing inside Baghdad's green zone.

FOCUS - CAMPAIGN DAY

JIM LEHRER: The day after the last presidential debate. Tom Bearden reports.

TOM BEARDEN: This morning, President Bush made the short trip aboard Air Force One from Phoenix, the site of last night's debate, to Las Vegas, to kick off the final leg of his reelection campaign. Inside the Mack Center on the campus of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the president was greeted by a large crowd of enthusiastic supporters, and a stage full of Republican governors who happened to have been meeting in Las Vegas.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: It wasn't very hard to get the governors to come to Vegas... (laughter) ...to begin a road trip. The next two days, they're going to travel our country to tell people that leadership matters. (Cheers and applause) They're going to tell the people that the best way to make sure America has strong and steady and principled leadership is to put Dick Cheney and me back into office. (Cheers and applause)

TOM BEARDEN: As soon as he had finished with his opening remarks, the president launched into a broad attack against his opponent, John Kerry.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Our very different records are a window into what we believe and what we'll do in the next four years. The senator believes in a bigger government. I believe in more freedom and choices for our citizens. (Cheers and applause) The senator believes government should dictate. I believe you should make the decisions. (Cheers and applause) On issue after issue, from Medicare without choices, to schools with less accountability, to higher taxes, he takes the side of more centralized control and more bureaucracy. There's a word for that attitude. It's called liberalism. (Cheers and applause) Now, he dismisses that as a label; must have seen it differently when he said to a newspaper, "I'm a liberal and proud of it." (Laughter) Others have noticed. The nonpartisan National Journal Magazine did a study and named him the most liberal member of the United States Senate, and that's saying something. ( Laughter ) another group known as the Americans for Democratic Action have given Sen. Kerry a higher lifetime liberal rating than Sen. Ted Kennedy. And that's an accomplishment. (Laughter )

TOM BEARDEN: Labeling Kerry a liberal is something the president has done increasingly on the campaign trail, and did so during last night's debate, in an exchange over tax policy.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: You voted to increase taxes 98 times. When they voted to... when they proposed reducing taxes, you voted against it 126 times. He voted to violate the budget caps 277 times. You know, there's a mainstream in American politics, and you sit right on the far left bank. As a matter of fact, your record is such that Ted Kennedy, your colleague, is the conservative senator from Massachusetts.

TOM BEARDEN: John Kerry also traveled to Las Vegas today, where he got a warm reception from the AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, holding its national meeting there.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: When I got in last night, I was driving into town, and I saw one of those tote boards with the chrikty chrikty click as the numbers go checking off. I asked my coordinator if that was the mega slot machine jackpot. He said, no, that's the Bush gasoline prices that are going up.

TOM BEARDEN: Those were Sen. Kerry's opening remarks, and he used them to set up a lengthy critique of President Bush's efforts on behalf of working families.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: George Bush had four years to years to face this truth and to do something about it, anything, do anything about it, to make life better for hard-working families in America. But instead of seizing the moment, I believe he has squandered the opportunity, and then he has spent his entire campaign trying make us believe the unbelievable -- jobs got shipped overseas and the Bush White House told us that's really good for America. Just the other day, the president's treasury secretary, his top economic adviser, went to Ohio where they've lost 235,000 jobs, and he says that the 1.6 million jobs lost in the private sector is just a myth. Mr. President, the millions of Americans who have lost jobs on your watch are not a myth. They are our neighbors. They are American citizens. They're our friends and families, and for four years, you've turned your back on them, if overtimes, for unemployment compensation, for health care, for protection and fair trade, for affordable drugs. (Applause)

TOM BEARDEN: During last night's debate, Sen. Kerry got the opportunity to endorse a specific policy change for working families when he was asked about raising the minimum wage.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Well, I'm glad you raised that question. It's long overdue time to raise the minimum wage. And America, this is one of those issues that separates the president and myself. We have fought to try to raise the minimum wage in the last years, but the Republican leadership of the House and Senate won't even let us have a vote on it. We're not allowed to vote on it. They don't want to raise the minimum wage. The minimum wage is the lowest minimum wage value it has been in our nation in 50 years. If we raised the minimum wage, which I will do over several years, to seven dollars an hour, 9.2 million women who are trying to raise their families would earn another $3,800 a year. Now, I think that it is a matter of fundamental right that if we raise the minimum wage, 15 million Americans would be positively affected. We'd put money into the hands of people who work hard, who obey the rules, who play for the American dream. And if we did that, we'd have more consumption ability in America, which is what we need right now in order to kick our economy into gear. I will fight tooth and nail to pass the minimum wage.

TOM BEARDEN: A CNN/USA Today/Gallup snap poll asking who did the better job last night, gave the nod to john Kerry, 52 percent to 39 percent. How the final debate affected the neck and neck presidential race could be seen with the release of new national polling as early as tomorrow.

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez has a closer look at last night's debate.

RAY SUAREZ: To assess how President Bush and Sen. Kerry communicated their messages, last night and in the two previous debates this election season, once again we're joined by James Fallows, national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor, can either or both campaigns look back at last night as an effective, persuasive hour-and-a-half in the life of the campaign?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Yes, they can, because each campaign spoke to a specific segment of the audience that is their needed base, and did so very effectively. You heard, for example, one of the characteristics we identified of Sen. Kerry's earlier, in an earlier program, which was the stay to them, go for specifics; only he added a twist in last night's debated. He indicted the Bush administration for what he said was not caring about American families, or they're not doing well under the Bush administration's policies. And then in six sentences he laid out eight statistics that specifically indicated numbers of things that tied the problems in what states, Arizona, Ohio, and Wisconsin. He spent most of his time when he was being specific either talking to the swing states or a critical constituency, women, whom is he is trying to draw back and open the gender gap, assault weapons, appeal to women, Roe V. Wade, appeal to women, minimum wage, more women are affected. By contrast, the president was speaking to his base, and particularly the fiscal conservatives, arguing that you're going to get more spending and more taxing under Sen. Kerry, and using such words as "liberal", "out of the mainstream" a lot, again a characteristic. He stayed on those messages.

RAY SUAREZ: Do you agree with the professor on her analysis of how the two campaigns used this and if, so does it create a conversation that's not really a conversation? Are they really having two separate programs?

JAMES FALLOWS: Sure. Certainly within the confines of the debate floor, that' so; I do agree very much that while we now have polls showing that in all three of the debates, the public considered that Sen. Kerry did the better job, what actually will matter is how each of the teams is able, each of the candidates can sort of rally its troops for the election. So we won't know that until Election Day. But you can think of Sen. Kerry essentially talking in policy, and about policy problems, about jobs, about health care, about all the other things that he went through, and the president essentially talking about values. And the most dramatic case of this was right after Sen. Kerry gave his very detailed proposal about the minimum wage, the president didn't even address the question about the minimum wage. He didn't even give the standard Republican answer, which was the burden on small business, but just went to no child left behind, which was sort of shorthand for accountability and local responsibility.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, as someone who is trying to pick apart the threads, why they do that sort of thing... when a moment like that occurs, what do you take away from it?

JAMES FALLOWS: Well, it took away from it -- it might have been, you know, sort of real-time difficulty from the president in being able to come up with the right kind of answer. But I think it was largely a strategy that each of the campaigns was given going in of who they had to go for. And you see Sen. Kerry trying for people in the middle, these elusive undecided voters, people who might be feeling economic uncertainty, loss of jobs, women, people concerned about gun legislation, the president seemed more to be trying to build enthusiasm and fortitude among his core people by saying, Sen. Kerry is too far to the left and I am a strong leader who will stay with you.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Professor, you are someone who studies persuasion and rhetoric. You noted that the two candidates brought up various themes in their time on the clock last night. Does it work? Does it work as a speech to a broad and diverse audience to bring up God, to bring up Ted Kennedy, to bring up liberalism?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Yes, it does, but let me turn for a moment to disagree with Jim about something. The president did say that he supported the McConnell bill that would have raised the minimum wage, and the problem with his saying that for that large audience is most people have no idea what that meant. But the reason that he said it, I believe, was to speak to blue collar workers and to say, wait a minute, I don't oppose the minimum wage. I actually favored some version of it. What the McConnell bill would have done, and it didn't pass the Senate or the House, and as a result it didn't come to the president, was provide an increase in the minimum wage but let the states exempt themselves from it. As further reference to God and liberal on each side, the candidates were doing something that was very important. One of the things that the senator was doing was speaking to those people who are more likely to be churchgoers and as a result more likely to vote Republican and saying, God factors in my policies and in my personal beliefs. In an interesting moment, he said that a woman's right to choose was to be decided by the woman, God and her doctor. The traditional Democratic formulation is the woman and her doctor. On the other side, the use of the words "liberal" and "out of the mainstream" and the suggestion that the senator is more liberal than Edward Kennedy, a suggestion that the National Journal made only by looking at some votes in one year and not in a full career, but nonetheless, a position that one can say is resonant, the senator's basic positions are to the liberal end of the continuum, all those words are essentially saying, don't take him to be mainstream. He's too far out there for you, centrist, middle-of-the-road voters. And by the way, base, he's really scary.

RAY SUAREZ: James, in watching these debates, did you see the candidates change tactics, change tack, put new things or drop old things from the arsenal coming into last night?

JAMES FALLOWS: Certainly you saw that on the president's side. That was one of several things which I think made this whole series of debates a significant step forward for Sen. Kerry and his campaign. You'll recall four years ago one of the problems for Al Gore was he seemed to be three different people in three different debates and the candidate of course of whom that is true this time is President Bush, who in the first debate was more or less the angry president, the second one was more the feisty president. This one he was kind of the smilier, friendlier president; whereas, Sen. Kerry was essentially the same every single time in his demeanor and the way he was advancing his points. And so I think that is a step back for the president. It leads me, what I think will be the historical impact of these debates, in 1980, an election which has many similarities to this current one, the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, had external problems, and Ronald Reagan was challenging him. And the debates proved to be a plausibility test for Ronald Reagan. Was he an acceptable alternative as the president? And I think that Sen. Kerry used these debates to pass that test. It doesn't mean that he's going to be elected; it does mean that he's competing on a different footing now.

RAY SUAREZ: Do these have a cumulative impact, Professor, both in the voters' perception of the candidates and in the candidates' view of the campaign themselves?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Yes, they do. One of the things that we know from studying debates is that voters learn from debates. They learn about the candidates' issue positions, and they learn about the candidates. They make judgments about how the candidate is going to act when the candidate governs. And it's important to try to hold our recollection of the person who debated when we hear stump speeches such as those that you excerpted at the beginning of the program because once the candidates go on the stump, they start to create the caricatures of the other side that they did not create inside the debates. They're much more careful about their facts even when they're still distorting in debates than they are on the stump. And, as a result, the candidate, for example, that has a natural advantage coming into the debates is almost always the challenger because the incumbent tries to caricature the challenger as the person who's highly risky. The advantage for Sen. Kerry as a result was going to be coming onto the stage and not being the caricature the president's campaign had made him out to be. The advantage for the president is that it gives him a chance to speak directly to the American people about all the things that are affecting their lives and forecast a future for them. When he said he would focus on Social Security reform in his next term, you can believe him. When Sen. Kerry says health care reform, you can believe him, as well. Promises forecast governance.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's talk about the cumulative impact a bit. After the first debate, the public said the senator won and it was by a pretty convincing margin. Right after the second debate, they said the senator won, but by a much smaller one. But then when the pollsters went back a week later, the margin started to grow rather than pull into a closer tie.

JAMES FALLOWS: Indeed.

RAY SUAREZ: What's going on there? Did the second one sort of mellow in the public's memory?

JAMES FALLOWS: I think that there may be some of that. And we're not far enough away from the third one yet to know what its view will be, four or five days later, but it's good news for Sen. Kerry that in each one of these debates his apparent win has become more apparent as time has passed and people have digested it. One hypothesis would be an emotional importance of debates is often some unintended revelation of a person that sort of either confirms or denies preexisting fears or hopes about the person. For example, when Al Gore was sighing, people thought that was what their image of him was. For Sen. Kerry the suspicions for the debates were that he was too stiff, too haughty, too indecisive; and his bearing did not confirm any of those things; and indeed refuted it in many ways. For President Bush some of the unintended revelations he had confirmed previous suspicions about him, of being not used to criticism, not willing to change his mind, testy, et cetera. So on the emotional score, I think those confirmations resonated with things people had previously been suspecting. And that may account for some of this cumulative effect.

RAY SUAREZ: But did that also set him up for a population going into last night's debate already perceiving him as having a good shot at winning again?

JAMES FALLOWS: Well, Sen. Kerry having...

RAY SUAREZ: Yes.

JAMES FALLOWS: I think a significant fact about the difference between the first and the third debates is that many more people watched the first one. And that was the one where the president did the worst, you know, by any measure. And so that was important. In the third one, the expectation games might have already shifted so that Sen. Kerry was expected to do well and there was a pre-discounting for some of the president's limitations as a debater. So I think probably the effect of the third one was more for each candidate to reinforce the point he was making to his own particular base.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor, in the brief time we have, agree, disagree?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Disagree. I don't think we can say win-loss about debates. We can say it about football; we can say it about chess. We can ask how much did the public learn? And you could say you won or lost, that is, you won the argument on specific issues, but you can't win or lose 90 minutes. I don't know what that means.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor, James, good to see you both.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: The health care issue raised last night; and the latest from Iraq.

ISSUE & DEBATE - HEALTH CARE

JIM LEHRER: Health care got much attention last night in the debate,and again today in the campaign. Susan Dentzer of our health unit begins our look. The unit is a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Our health care system is the envy of the world because we believe in making sure that the decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by officials in the nation's capital.

SUSAN DENTZER: President Bush and Sen. Kerry locked horns in last night's debate over the twin devils of U.S. health care: Skyrocketing costs and rising numbers of people without health insurance.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: And it's gotten worse under President Bush over the course of the last years. Five million Americans have lost their health insurance in this country.

SUSAN DENTZER: On costs, moderator and CBS anchor Bob Schieffer cited a recent report commissioned by the advocacy group Families USA; it showed workers' health insurance premiums had risen 36 percent over the past four years.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Who bears responsibility for this? Is it the government? Is it the insurance companies? Is it the lawyers? Is it the doctors? Is it the administration?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Gosh, I sure hope it's not the administration. No, there is a... look, here. There's a systemic problem. Health care costs are on the rise because consumers are not involved in the decision-making process. Most health care costs are covered by third parties. And therefore, the actual user of health care is not the purchaser of health care. And there's no market forces involved with health care. It's one of the reasons I'm a strong believer in what they call health savings accounts. These are accounts that allow somebody to buy a low-premium, high-deductible catastrophic plan and couple it with tax-free savings. Businesses can contribute. Employees can contribute on a contractual basis. But this is the way to make sure people are actually involved with the decision-making process on health care. Secondly, I do believe the lawsuits... I don't believe... I know that the lawsuits are causing health care costs to rise in America. That's why I'm such a strong believer in medical liability reform.

SUSAN DENTZER: Sen. Kerry took a sharply different tack, arguing that the Bush administration had in fact contributed to higher costs. He pointed to a provision in the Medicare reforms enacted last year that effectively bars the government from negotiating lower prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Medicare is paid for by the American taxpayer. Medicare belongs to you. Medicare is for seniors, many of them on fixed income to, lift them out of poverty. But rather than help you, the taxpayer, have lower cost, rather than help seniors have less expensive drugs, the president made it illegal-- illegal-- for Medicare to actually go out and bargain for lower prices. Now, we also have people sicker because they don't have health insurance, so whether it's diabetes or cancer, they come to hospitals later and it costs America more. We've got to have health care for all Americans.

SUSAN DENTZER: The candidates then tangled over extending health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. According to a census bureau survey, 45 million Americans lacked health coverage in 2003. Sen. Kerry outlined his plans, which private analysts have estimated would cover up to 27 million of the uninsured.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: We take over Medicaid children from the states so that every child in America is covered. And in exchange, if the states want to-- they're not forced to; they can choose to -- they cover individuals up to 300 percent of poverty. It's their choice.

SUSAN DENTZER: The senator also described how he would open up the federal employees' health benefits program, which covers members of Congress and nine million other federal workers and their dependents. By gaining access to this large buying pool, he said, small businesses, older workers, and those between jobs could obtain affordable private coverage such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: We give you broader competition to allow you to buy into the same health care plan that senators and congressmen give themselves. And most importantly, we give small business a 50 percent tax credit so that after we lower the cost of health care, they also get, whether they're self-employed or a small business, a lower cost to be able to cover their employees.

SUSAN DENTZER: President Bush has also proposed a less costly set of tax credits to help individuals buy health insurance, a plan that analysts say would extend coverage to several million people. But the president didn't raise that last night. Instead, he emphasized what he said was a philosophical difference with Sen. Kerry.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: If you raise the Medicaid to 300 percent, it provides an incentive for small businesses not to provide private insurance to their employees. Why should they insure somebody when the government's going to insure it for them? We have a fundamental difference of opinion. I think government-run health will lead to poor-quality health, will lead to rationing, will lead to less choice.

SUSAN DENTZER: And even though the evening closed with a cordial handshake, a wide gulf clearly separates the two candidates on almost every aspect of the health care debate.

JIM LEHRER: And to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: So how well does either candidate's plan deal with the spiraling cost of health insurance and the growing ranks of Americans without insurance at all? For that, we turn to Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA. His nonprofit advocacy group authored the study on rising health insurance premium costs cited in last night's debate; and Gail Wilensky, the administrator of Medicare under the first President Bush. She is now a senior fellow at Project Hope, a foundation for international health education. Neither organization has endorsed a candidate in this campaign.

And welcome to you both. We're going to try put manageable boundaries on this huge issue. We're dealing with the non-Medicare side here. And I'd also like to try to break it into manageable bits. Let's start with the ranks of the uninsured and the Kerry plan. Ron Pollack, how well does the Kerry plan deal with, tackle the 45 million uninsured Americans?

RON POLLACK: I think it does a very good job. I have to say, there is one major departure and that is the emphasis that Sen. Kerry has put on this issue versus the president. This is an issue that's really been treated with neglect over the last four years, and we've seen a huge increase in the number of uninsured. Now, Sen. Kerry has a variety of approaches that are designed to expand coverage to the uninsured. First of all, what the senator wants to do is to make sure people have access to more coverage in the workplace, and he does that in a variety of ways to make it more affordable for small businesses, and ways we'll probably talk about later. He also provides tax credits for small businesses. He also provides temporary assistants for those people who are between jobs. You know, somebody's between jobs, what happens is they're eligible for so-called COBRA coverage. It's coverage that has a real catch to it, and that is you can still get the coverage of your previous employer, but you have got to pay the full freight. Less than one out of five people eligible for that coverage actually get it. So he would help subsidize that. He also would achieve universal coverage for children by expanding the children's health insurance program. In total, he would cover about...

MARGARET WARNER: By taking it over.

RON POLLACK: About 27 million people who are uninsured today.

MARGARET WARNER: And he'd do that with the children by taking over Medicaid from the states?

RON POLLACK: He essentially does a trade with the states. He says to the states, we'll pick up all your costs for covering children in the Medicaid program. Your end of the bargain is to provide more coverage through the children's health insurance program to children who are in families up to 300 percent of poverty, roughly $46,000 for a family of three.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Now, give us your critique first of the Kerry plan. President Bush and his campaign ads are saying this is big government-run health care with bureaucrats, not your doctors, will make the decision. Do you share that critique?

GAIL WILENSKY: Well, it is definitely a lot of government. Most people if they listen to Sen. Kerry would assume that most of the increase in the number of insured are going to come from people with private insurance; but the estimates are somewhere between 68 percent and another independent estimate - the Lewin Report that was raised last night -- said as many as 21 of the 25 million people are going to get their coverage on Medicaid and the children's health insurance program, which is another type of public program. So this is, in fact, a huge expansion of the government's role in providing health insurance to many people who are not normally in the range that we think about government low-income support; twice the poverty line, three times the poverty line. It's not really much of an expansion of employer-sponsored or private insurance; a very different model from what the president is talking about.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Now, give us the president's model, and we'll do the same thing in reverse. How far... his would cover, what, seven million...

GAIL WILENSKY: The estimates are somewhere seven or eight million. And that clearly is a first step but will leave a lot more yet to do. The president's used the words "fundamentally different philosophy." I think that's actually a very good characterization. What the president's plan proposes is to financially empower individuals, either do it by providing what are called refundable tax credits, that's money even if you're too poor to pay taxes, and access to group insurance, and for higher-income people, the ability to be able to use pre-tax dollars, like those of us who have employer-sponsored insurance, to be able to go out, set some money aside and get a high deductible premium.

MARGARET WARNER: These are the health savings accounts?

GAIL WILENSKY: These are the health savings accounts. That lets people buy the kinds of plans that make sense to them. There are some provisions to try to make sure that there is some group insurance available so that you can get the benefits of low cost, but it's a very different philosophy, not the major expansion of public programs, empowering individuals, getting them in the action and letting them buy a health plan that makes sense for them.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. What's your critique of that?

RON POLLACK: Well, I think what the president would do is make a bad situation worse. One of the things the president didn't talk about, nor did Gail, is that the president has proposed creating a so-called block grant for Medicaid and the children's health insurance program. And what that means is that it limits the amount of money the federal government will put into it and the amount of money that the states put into it, and as a result, a lot of people for whom Medicaid is a lifeline today will lose their coverage. But let's go to the health savings accounts which the president talked about and Gail just talked about. I think it does harm to the health care system because a health savings account essentially is a high deductible policy. Now who's -

MARGARET WARNER: Meaning what?

RON POLLACK: It means that the first dollars in health coverage you pay out of your own pocket. If you have a high deductible, who does that appeal to? Well, it appeals much more to the young, to the healthy, and with a tax benefit to the wealthy. On the other hand, you have got the sick and you've got the older people and those people who are in the middle class. Now, when you take the wealthy and the healthy and the young and put 'em in one pool and you keep the older, sicker and poorer people in another pool, the premiums for that group that needs health care the most are going to skyrocket. So the people who need health care the most will find it least affordable.

MARGARET WARNER: And that leads me to the next topic, the affordability of these skyrocketing health insurance premiums. Now, give us... I was going to ask you both who has the best plan, but I will start with you, Mr. Pollack, because Kerry has the more unusual idea here.

RON POLLACK: He does have a more unusual idea, and the president, of course, has a record, as Susan Dentzer indicated. Premiums have gone up enormously, three times faster than wages. But what this unusual plan that you're talking about is a thing called reinsurance. What does that mean? For a small business person, the reason health care costs are so expensive is that they worry that one or two of the people in their workforce are going to have a catastrophic illness, and if that happens, that's going to bankrupt that small business person. So it has premiums going up and it's very unstable. What Sen. Kerry would do is he would make sure that for anybody that has one of these catastrophic illnesses, once there was an expenditure of $50,000, then the federal government would pick up three-quarters of the remaining cost. That does two things: First, it says to employers, your premiums will go down and it makes those premiums far more stable.

MARGARET WARNER: What's wrong with that plan? Do you think President Bush has a better one?

GAIL WILENSKY: Yes to that. Let me explain, first, interesting, the health savings accounts we talked about, they have been attractive actually to people who are not just the young and not just the high income, and including some of the sick. So in our first year, they actually aren't working the way Ron Pollack suggests and I don't know how many people have been concerned about. The importance of trying to get costs to moderate can't be overemphasized, but what the senator is talking about in the so-called reinsurance is shifting the expensive part of the health care over to the government. That's just a massive cost shift. It's actually estimated to cost $600 or $700 billion. That doesn't do anything to moderate spending. What might be able to help is trying to get people involved in some of the decision making, at least the routine health care costs.

MARGARET WARNER: You're now saying it might reduce the cost for employers, but it might reduce those private premiums, but you're just shifting that cost to the federal government?

GAIL WILENSKY: Absolutely. There is nothing in that that in any way moderates spending on health care. What do you have to do to moderate spending? Well, a lot of things, unfortunately: Worry about medical liability, worry about getting people to make good decisions, get information out there, get electronic records. It's not a simple problem. It's a lot, systematic was the word used last night. That's a pretty good answer as to what has to change; systematically our health care system, if we're going to moderate spending.

MARGARET WARNER: Neither one of them have talked... first, let's just say briefly about the cost of each of their plans, and Mr. Pollack, if Sen. Kerry's covers four times as many people or brings four times as many people into the system, twenty-five or twenty-seven versus say seven, but yet it seems to cost even more than four times as much than President Bush's, a lot more...

RON POLLACK: Margaret, the costs that we hear about only focus on what's happening on the federal side of the ledger. When people pay, they pay...

MARGARET WARNER: Give us some idea of the range we're talking about here, the difference.

RON POLLACK: Well, Emery University was saying that it was about $700 million over ten years -- $700 billion over ten years. We're only typically focusing on the federal side of the ledger. People wind up paying through a number of ways. And Sen. Kerry indicated that last night. They pay for it by the cost they pay in premiums. They pay state taxes. Now, what Sen. Kerry does is he has the federal government provide fiscal relief to the states, and so people will be paying less tax dollars to the states. He provides relief to businesses, which means that small businesses will be paying less money and the employees of those small businesses will be paying money. So to focus just on one side of the ledger, I think, actually is...

MARGARET WARNER: So you're agreeing with Gail Wilensky that it's a cost shift, I mean, that he's having the federal taxpayer pay on more in return for relieving both the states and employers?

RON POLLACK: In the respect that we just talked about, yes, however, there are other things that Sen. Kerry does. For example, and it came up last night in the debate, he would allow a host of things that would enable us to get prices down. For example, he agrees in allowing people to re-import drugs from Canada, which are much cheaper. He would allow government programs to bargain for cheaper prices. These are things the president opposes because actually he supported the drug industry's position on that.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. But let's then... I was trying to stay away from the Medicare side because that's a whole other discussion. Let's talk about the president's other point about controlling the overall cost does have to do with lawsuits. Very briefly, what's the difference between the two men on lawsuits?

GAIL WILENSKY: The president has for a number of years tried to get legislation enacted that would cap or limit the awards, not the direct costs of having a problem resolved, but the pain and suffering or punitive damage awards. What the senator has said is he doesn't want to go that direction. He hasn't supported it and he's, in fact, voted against that legislation; that he wants to try to have a way to make sure that so-called frivolous lawsuits don't occur, but that just means having someone who is in an area say, oh, this is legitimate. We have those people. They're called expert witnesses. The notion that that will modify a liability just doesn't pass muster.

MARGARET WARNER: Brief retort from you - 30 seconds.

RON POLLACK: As a former law school dean, let me just say that this really is an effective way of dealing with lots of litigation. It's a panel of experts, not someone chosen by a lawyer. There are penalties to lawyers who bring frivolous lawsuits. There is conflict management processes, mediation that Sen. Kerry would have us do. And he would place a cap on punitive damages. What Sen. Kerry does is he says, he doesn't want these frivolous lawsuits in the system, but he doesn't want to hurt the people who really suffered because of malpractice.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. And we have to leave it there. Thank you both very much.

RON POLLACK: Thank you, Margaret.

FOCUS - STRUGGLE FOR SECURITY

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight: The bombings inside the Baghdad green zone. We have a report from Edward Wong of the New York Times. Terence Smith talked with him earlier this evening.

TERENCE SMITH: Ed Wong, thank you for joining us. What can you tell us about these two explosions that took place inside the green zone?

EDWARD WONG: Well, as you probably know, one of them took place in a marketplace, the other one at a popular restaurant. And basically, it just shows how vulnerable the American occupation, as well as the interim government, are here. The green zone is generally considered the safest area in Baghdad. It's a four-square-mile area that holds the American embassy, as well as the offices of Prime Minister Allawi's government. And there have been attempts to bomb places in the green zone before. For example, just last week people discovered a bomb at the same restaurant that was bombed today, and they diffused it. But apparently the restaurant was filled with patrons today when the bomb went off. It's unclear exactly who set off the bombs. Jordanian militant Abu Musab al- Zarqawi has taken credit for it, but his group often takes credit for a lot of attacks, and there is no confirmation that he or his group actually took part in them. But there is some indication that the bomb that went off... the bombs that went off were perpetrated by non-Iraqis, because apparently an Iraqi worker at the restaurant asked two men who went into the restaurant whether they were Iraqis after he started speaking to them, and they said they were Jordanians. So obviously something tipped the worker off to the fact that they weren't Iraqi-- perhaps the accent they were speaking in.

TERENCE SMITH: And is it believed that they actually hand-carried the explosives into the zone? And how is that possible?

EDWARD WONG: It's unclear. Explosives themselves were hand- carried to their respective sites within the zone. Whether they hand-carried them into the zone from the outside isn't clear right now. The thing is that there are many checkpoints to get into the zone. And each time there is fairly extensive security checks. When I go into the zone to do interviews or to go to press conferences, I have to go through five different checkpoints. I'm frisked at three of them, and I have to present my badge at three of them. So it is fairly rigorous. At the same time, there are 12,000 Iraqis who live within the zone who come in and out of the zone. And also, among those 12,000 Iraqis, there are many who are hostile to the occupation. It's not an...it's not a rare sentiment among Iraqis throughout the country or even among those living in the green zone. And the bomb very well could have been manufactured within the green zone or put together in pieces or smuggled into the green zone in pieces and then assembled there.

TERENCE SMITH: What impact has this had on the sense of security of the people who are in the green zone, Iraqi and American?

EDWARD WONG: Well, I think the military had said that it's going to step up its security practices within the green zone, both inside as well as on the perimeters outside. And they've said that they've gotten reports that within the holy month of Ramadan, which is a feasting month in Muslim countries, that there will be an increase in attacks because within this month, people who martyr themselves apparently get some benefits from doing so within Ramadan. And today is the eve of Ramadan, and tomorrow's the first day, so the military is going to be fairly cautious starting, you know, right after the bombings onward.

TERENCE SMITH: Any sense of the desired target of this? Was it the American occupation itself? Was it the people in the cafe? What can you tell us?

EDWARD WONG: I think... it was clear that the bombers knew that there would be foreigners both in the cafe as well as in the market where they bombed, and the casualty toll of the foreigners is fairly high in comparison to previous bombings where they usually kill lots of Iraqi civilians and not so many soldiers, American soldiers or American civilians. This time they did have a fairly significant toll. And I think basically the strike is deadly both in the number of casualties but also in the symbolic value of the strike, and that is showing that the militants can strike anywhere within Iraq, right in the very heart of the occupation and at the very heart of the Iraqi government, and it really instills a sense of fear throughout people.

TERENCE SMITH: Some of the victims in the reporting worked for a contracting company, DynCorp, that... can you tell us about that, what they do? Do they provide security in Iraq, as I know they do in Afghanistan?

EDWARD WONG: DynCorp is a fairly large security contractor that's working here, and they're also a very popular target for insurgents. They occupy rooms in a hotel called the Baghdad Hotel, which is actually right down the street from where I'm taping this right now, and there have been a lot of attacks on that hotel, lots of car bombs. Just a week-and-a-half or two weeks ago there was a large car bomb that exploded right outside the hotel. And basically Iraqis always say that these DynCorp workers, when they see them around, they accuse them of being intelligence agents for the Americans, perhaps CIA agents, maybe agents of the Mossad. And so they're fairly common targets.

TERENCE SMITH: Separately, Ed, we read that the president of Iraq, al-Yawer, is quoted in a paper today as saying that the January date for elections in Iraq is "not sacred." I wonder how officials there are interpreting that, and whether this is a signal --that of postponement.

EDWARD WONG: It's a statement that has to be taken with some weight. Sheik Ghazi has a ceremonial role as president of Iraq, but also he represents one of the largest Sunni tribes in Iraq, the Shamar tribe. A lot of its members are up North, and any statement that Sheik Ghazi says can't be ignored. He represents, for many people, the Sunni establishment. And this is... you know, the Sunni Muslims are a minority in Iraq, but they ruled Iraq for a long time. And they're the ones thatneed to be brought in to be enfranchised within the new government so that they'll try and channel their energies into legitimate politics rather than the insurgency. And Sheik Ghazi's statement is a big break from Prime Minister Allawi and President Bush's stand, but it's something that can't be brushed off.

TERENCE SMITH: And so we'll just have to see in coming days, then, the reaction to it? Is that what you're saying?

EDWARD WONG: That's right. It will be interesting to see what the prime minister's office says in reaction to it, and whether even the Bush administration or people within the administration have anything to say about it.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay, Ed Wong of the New York Times, thanks very much.

EDWARD WONG: Thanks a lot.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the other major developments of this day: President Bush and Sen. Kerry returned to campaigning, following their final debate last night. Mr. Bush brushed aside polls that found he lost all three debates. He said he's optimistic he'll win in November. Sen. Kerry said the president is "out of touch." He said the country will vote in 19 days to change course.

JIM LEHRER: And, once again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here, in silence, are 12 more.

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening with Mark Shields and David Brooks, among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.