With numerous polls showing the importance of health care reform, presidential candidates are proposing a raft of ways to solve a daunting social challenge.

Their plans largely center on reining in costs and expanding coverage to the country’s 47 million uninsured residents.

While all the candidates trumpet affordability and availability, the various proposals reflect a philosophical gulf between Democrats and Republicans.

For example, Democratic contenders Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York , former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, seeking solutions to mounting health costs, want universal coverage. Their proposals favor group coverage through employers, public plans or large purchasing pools.

By contrast, Republican contenders prefer a free-market approach, pitching on-your-own proposals that would give individuals more ability – through tax incentives or deductions – to purchase their own health insurance. Aiming for less government reliance, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas want health care to largely rest in the hands of the private sector.

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A small but growing number of American families beset by major medical problems are learning the hard way that simply having health insurance is sometimes not enough.

Those who need organ transplants or who have hemophilia, Gaucher disease or other costly chronic illnesses can easily rack up medical bills that blow through the lifetime benefits cap of $1 million or more that is a standard part of many insurance policies.

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Medical malpractice can occur whenever a patient is in the care of a healthcare professional. This can involve the failure or delay in properly diagnosing or treating an illness or injury so that it causes new or aggravated injuries.

Highly experienced and knowledgeable medical malpractice attorneys help thousands of people every year who have been the victim of medical malpractice or medical negligence.

Many people do not realize how frequently medical malpractice occurs. In fact, thousands of people every year are either injured from medical malpractice or medical negligence, or die from injuries or illnesses that could have been prevented or treated with proper medical care.

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THE ONE THING all the presidential candidates seem to agree on is that the American health-care system is in shambles. But that’s about where the accord ends. How to go about fixing the system — and particularly, how to ensure that all Americans have some type health coverage — is the subject of plenty political sparring that will no doubt continue through Election Day.

While the candidates argue over this thorny issue, the number of uninsured Americans continues to grow. The U.S. Census put the latest number of uninsured at 47 million in 2006, up from 44.8 million in 2005. This group comes at a great cost. The U.S. spends nearly $100 billion a year providing health services to the uninsured, often for preventable diseases. Hospitals dole out about $34 billion in uncompensated care a year, while another $37 billion is paid by people with coverage for those who are uninsured, according to the nonpartisan group National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC).

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When it comes to health insurance, one is definitely the loneliest number. Buying a policy on your own instead of through your employer often means getting skimpier benefits and paying higher costs, if you’re approved at all. But as employers pull back on coverage, either canceling policies outright or increasing their employees’ share of the costs, more people are turning to individually purchased insurance, despite its generally lousy track record on protecting and providing for patients when they’re sick. Recent rulings may help curb some of the worst industry practices. But this type of insurance is not a good choice for the faint of heart.

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Democratic voters are far more dissatisfied with the nation’s health care system than their Republican counterparts and much more likely to support a substantial increase in government spending to expand health coverage, a new report says.

A survey of nearly 1,200 voters in 35 states plus the District of Columbia found that health care was the second most important issue affecting how Democratic voters would vote in their presidential primary or caucus – following only the war in Iraq. Meanwhile, health care tied for fourth among Republican voters’ priorities – following the war, the economy and immigration.

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Democrats cited the nation’s economic problems as a reason to expand a popular health insurance program for children on Wednesday, but their effort failed as the House sustained President Bush’s veto of a bill to provide coverage to nearly four million uninsured children.

The vote for the bill was 260 to 152. Supporters were 15 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass the measure over the president’s objections.

“Amid this economic downturn, with skyrocketing energy costs, a record number of mortgage foreclosures and fewer new jobs, the rate of unemployment has jumped dramatically,” said Representative Allyson Y. Schwartz, Democrat of Pennsylvania. “Two-thirds of unemployed individuals lose health care coverage for their families when they lose their jobs. In times like these, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program is needed most.”

Republicans said the vote was a political stunt, intended to embarrass Mr. Bush before his State of the Union address next week.

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The House on Wednesday is scheduled to vote on whether to override President Bush’s second veto of a bill (HR 3963) that would have expanded SCHIP, but supporters of the legislation are about a dozen votes short of the two-thirds majority needed, CongressDaily reports (Johnson, CongressDaily, 1/22). The legislation would have expanded the program to cover 10 million children and increased spending on the program by $35 billion over five years, funded with a 61-cent-per-pack increase of the federal cigarette tax. It also would have limited coverage to children in families with annual incomes below 300% of the federal poverty level.

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The sad state of health care is one of the leading issues in the presidential campaigns. Our system is a national disgrace. It costs twice as much per person as other industrialized countries, yet 47 million Americans have no health insurance, and our health lags behind most industrialized nations. And, except for those who pay extra for a boutique provider, service is often poor.

We need major transformation of our system. But without consensus on three fundamental requirements, political haggling over the matter will get us nowhere.

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“Our healthcare system’s too expensive, too dehumanized, too technically complicated and not sufficiently patient centered,” said Dr. Timothy Lane, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and former chief of Moses Cone Memorial Hospital’s internal medicine program. “We’re in enormous disarray.”

He described two poles of thought in healthcare delivery, leaving little doubt which one he favored.

One philosophical school views healthcare as a capitalistic good to be traded on the open market, Lane suggested, while the other describes it as a social good, guaranteed to all. Capitalist healthcare is based on the premise that when consumers have sufficient knowledge they are able to make rational decisions in weighing price against quality in the selection of options. Because of the urgency of personal healthcare needs and the complexity of medical practices, he proposed, consumers rarely have enough information to make timely and intelligent decisions about their healthcare

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