No mandate, no universal care

After attacking Sen. John McCain and President George W. Bush on Iraq, taxes and energy, an ad from the Campaign to Defend America finally turns to health care.

"Absolutely no plan for universal health care. McSame as Bush."

Universal health care has been much debated in the Democratic primary campaign, but hardly mentioned on the Republican side. The consensus among health care experts is that to achieve universal health care — the intention to cover every person with no exceptions — there must be a legal requirement for care, such as a mandate for individuals to buy insurance. In the Democratic primary campaign, Sen. Hillary Clinton supports an individual mandate, while Sen. Barack Obama opposes it on the grounds that its implementation could penalize the working poor.

Bush does not support any sort of health care mandate, nor does McCain.

"On health care we trust patients to make decisions, not bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.," Bush said on March 13, 2008, at a Republican Congresional Committee dinner.

At a health care forum on Oct. 31, 2007, hosted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, McCain said he opposed mandates, even while discussing plans to improve access to health care.

"I don't think that there should be a mandate for every American to have health insurance. I think that one of our goals should be that every American own their own home. But I'm not going to mandate that every American own their own home," McCain said.

McCain does have a health care plan, but there's no clause for making it apply to everyone and therefore universal. So we find this claim to be True.