CAMPAIGN '92 Health care
By Kerry Hannon and Shelly Branch

(MONEY Magazine) – With more than 36 million Americans lacking health insurance and millions more struggling to pay medical bills that rose 45% on average over the past five years, health-care reform has become a major issue in the presidential campaign. Our recent Americans and Their Money poll shows that the general public clearly knows what it wants; 76% said they would pay higher taxes in exchange for guaranteed health insurance. As the field of Democratic candidates tightened with the withdrawals of Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey and Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, proposals from those still running range from totally overhauling the current system in favor of national health insurance, supported by Democrat Brown, to some minor massaging advocated by Republicans Bush, Buchanan and Duke. Yet as our head-to-head comparison below shows, the candidates except for Buchanan and Duke agree on one thing: they would prohibit companies that sell health insurance from rejecting applicants because of their medical histories. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most thorough and revolutionary proposal -- full government funding of health-care benefits -- is the least likely to become law. Estimated cost: $234 billion a year. Kerrey was the most vocal proponent of such a plan. Harkin addressed health care in sketchy terms, saying only that all Americans should be guaranteed health insurance. That leaves Brown still expressing support for national health coverage but without spelling out any details of his proposal. Tsongas and Clinton, meanwhile, endorse a version of the so-called pay-or-play idea first advanced by 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. It requires employers to provide insurance to all employees or to pay extra payroll taxes into a federal fund that would cover the uninsured (Tsongas' tax would be 6% to 8%; Clinton refuses to specify a figure). The Republican candidates tend to favor tax incentives to help people afford insurance. Bush has proposed a tax credit of as much as $3,750 a family to buy health policies. Buchanan declines to go beyond saying that a tax break would be useful. And Duke urges new write-offs for insurers who cover what his spokesman calls ''undesirables'' -- those with chronic health problems.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: NO CREDIT CAPTION: Where the candidates stand on health care