Clinton focuses on health care

Hillary Rodham Clinton focused on health care Friday in the second day of a Washington campaign swing, surrounding herself with nurses and saying her rival Barack Obama looks at the issue more like a Republican than a Democrat.

Clinton spoke to a crowd of about 6,000 people at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, delivering a speech mostly about health care. She took several questions from nurses and some patients, too, who told of battles with insurance companies.

Clinton's plan calls for mandated universal coverage, while Obama's does not require health insurance for everyone. Instead, he would expand Medicaid and offer subsidies to make health care more affordable.

In an interview after Friday's rally, Clinton said Obama doesn't support universal coverage because "it wasn't worth the fight, it wasn't something he was willing to go to the mat over."

Here is an edited transcript of the interview:

Clinton: Senator Obama's campaign is all about bringing people together. But the question is, for what, and against whom? Because you're not going to obliterate the differences that exist. You're not going to eliminate the health-insurance companies and the drug companies. So you have to be prepared to put together a coalition, but be willing to fight for what you believe in.

I think the American people deserve a president who's a fighter and a doer and champion, not a talker. And from my perspective, standing up and fighting for universal health care is a core Democratic value.

Picture the debate with Senator [John] McCain: He's going to stand up and say he's going to have health-savings accounts and he's going to have tax credits and he's going to cover a lot of people. So if you go into that already having ceded universal health care and basically using, as Barack now is, Republican and health-insurance talking points ... there's no real distinction.

The Seattle Times: After Iowa of course there was a lot of talk about change. Everybody wanted it. Both parties talked about it. What was surprising in a way, given the troubled years of the Bush administration, why wasn't that where everybody started? Obama did start with change, but others were slower to come around to that.

Clinton: Well, I just don't agree. I can only speak for myself. I think number one, having the first woman president is a sea change of enormous proportions. It changes everything about how we view ourselves, how the world views us. Maybe it was so self-evident it didn't need to be talked about so much.

Also, everything that I have proposed is a dramatic change from the status quo, which is George W. Bush and the Republicans.

I never saw contradiction between change and experience. I think you have to have the strength and experience to make the changes that we want. ... I think change is the goal, but experience is the means to achieve the goal.

The Seattle Times: Do you think you may have been hurt in that you are so well-known in America, people aren't shocked you are a woman running for president? They feel like they're comfortable with you already, so how could this be revolutionary?

Clinton: That's an interesting point. I haven't thought about it. ... You know, being a woman gives me a whole different perspective. We've never had a daughter or a wife or a mother or a sister in the White House. And I'm not sure people fully grasp what a change that might be. ...

It feels like people are kind of sorting all of this out and making sense of it.

The Seattle Times: None of the candidates comes here and talks about trade. ... Is there a trade agenda that you have and that should be part of this campaign debate? Or have we all kind of agreed on trade?

Clinton: I think that Democrats and progressives have concluded that we do need to take a look at how we conduct trade, that the debate between free trade and fair trade is kind of a 20th-century debate. We need a 21st-century debate.

I talk about smart, pro-American trade. I talk about how we need a timeout to really look at where we are with trade. I believe we can compete and compete well around the world.

This state produces a lot of exports, and we want to not only continue that but expand it. But at the same time, we do have to be much more conscious of the way trade can be used to raise standards of living, raise environmental standards.

We can use trade as part of our global-warming agenda. There's a lot we have to re-imagine about trade. It may be that because we are making a transition in trade it's not talked about so much because people are having to work through exactly what we mean about it.

David Postman: 360-236-8267 or dpostman@seattletimes.com