Candidates Diverge on Health Care

Republican presidential candidate John McCain says the United States is approaching a "perfect storm" of problems that "will cause our health care system to implode" if the next president doesn't act.

Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton would agree. But that's about where agreement over health care ends.

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Len Nichols, an economist at the New America Foundation, a centrist think tank in Washington, says without a mandate for everyone to get insurance, some people would wait until they are sick to buy coverage. That would deprive insurance companies of premiums paid by healthy clients that offset costs of treating the sick.