Obama Healthcare Bash

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is taking some heat from liberals, including former senator John Edwards, D-N.C., for offering a healthcare plan that stops short of mandating universal health coverage.

Obama appeared to endorse mandatory universal coverage barely a year ago.

Last February, at a town-hall meeting in his home state of Illinois, Obama bemoaned the shortcomings of the nation’s healthcare system and said the answer should be universal coverage, according to the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago newspaper.

The newspaper paraphrases Obama as saying: "It’s time to accept that we must offer some form of basic health care to every American. Health care should be like auto insurance — mandatory for all Americans. A larger pool of subscribers would drive down health care costs."

An Obama spokesman, Bill Burton, said that the senator now believes that the issue of mandates should be left to the states to decide, while the federal government focuses on bringing down healthcare costs for everyone.

"As he looked into healthcare, he saw that a mandate was not the answer," Burton said. "Good things are happening in the states. The federal government should not stunt what’s going on with the states."

Burton said Obama finds the nation’s handling of auto insurance to be "instructive" in crafting a health insurance plan. Forty-eight states require drivers to have car insurance, but there is no nationwide mandate. A recent study found one of the states without a mandate — New Hampshire — has a smaller portion of uninsured drivers than many of its neighbors that do require coverage.

Healthcare policy analysts have identified the absence of a mandate in Obama’s plan as a key point of distinction with Edwards’ proposal.

An Edwards spokesman described Obama’s plan as "simply inadequate."

UPDATE: A transcript of the 2006 event provided by the Obama campaign shows that the senator mentioned mandatory coverage as "an example" of a way the country can provide "some kind of basic health care for every American." He cited Massachusetts’ new universal healthcare law, but — despite the Daily Herald’s characterization — he did not endorse using that as a national model.