With health care costs on the rise and more Americans joining the rolls of the uninsured every day, health care remains among the top domestic concerns of voters today. Representatives of Presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama spoke Monday (Sept. 22) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC about the candidates’ proposals for reforming the U.S. health care system.

Sponsored by the Keck School’s Office of Educational Affairs, a forum on “Health Care and the Presidential Race” featured physician Donald Kurth, associate professor of preventive medicine at Loma Linda University and mayor of the City of Rancho Cucamonga, representing McCain, and E. Richard Brown, professor of public health at the UCLA School of Public Health and the founder and director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, representing Obama.

Referring to the quality of health care provided to Americans as “among the very highest in the world,” Kurth said that the McCain platform encourages “market freedom for all Americans” by relying on “consumer choice for physicians and enhanced competition for pharmaceuticals, health insurance, and all aspects of the health care industry.”

Additionally, Kurth said, McCain would place emphasis on “portability using refundable tax credits for individuals rather than the current tax exclusions of employer-provided insurance.” Kurth summarized McCain’s vision for American health as “your life, your health and your choice,” while describing the four pillars of McCain’s health reform policy as affordability, portability and security, access and choice, and quality.

Representing Obama’s position, Brown said that the candidate “believes in universal coverage” and is a vigorous advocate for his plan that provides “accessible, affordable health insurance for all Americans.” Obama would create the National Health Insurance Exchange, a program similar to CalPERS, the California state public employees health insurance system that contracts with different private plans, Brown said. People who currently have insurance could keep the insurance they already have if they wish to. Tax credits under Obama’s plan would come in the form of income-based tax credits if people are not able to afford health insurance premiums, and the tax exemption for employer-based health insurance plans would remain.

Obama’s plan would also emphasize prevention by paying for clinical preventive services such as breast cancer screenings and immunizations, and “supporting effective clinical and community measures to change policy to address the problems of health behaviors, which actually lead people to chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease,” Brown said.

Kurth and Brown opened the discussion with brief summaries of their candidates’ proposals. Each was then given the opportunity to respond to his opponent’s statements. The forum concluded with each representative answering pre-submitted questions posed by student leaders and opening the floor to questions posed by audience members in the standing-room-only auditorium on the Health Sciences Campus. An overflow crowd watched the event via simulcast in another lecture hall.

Listen to the recorded debate online.