Nine candidates set for webcast health forums

Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) will be the first of at least nine presidential candidates to participate in a series of webcast forums on healthcare reform co-sponsored by a liberal advocacy group and a hospital lobbying organization.

{mosads}Following Edwards’s appearance next Monday, candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) will be among those to appear at the forums, which are being put on by Families USA and the Federation of American Hospitals.

Fellow Democratic hopefuls Sens. Joseph Biden Jr. (Del.) and Chris Dodd (Conn.), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson also are committed to appearing. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is the only Republican besides McCain who so far has agreed to participate in a forum. The sponsors invited all of the candidates.

Edwards, Kucinich, Biden, McCain and Dodd have committed to the dates for their appearances. The others have not been scheduled.
Each event will feature a single candidate discussing healthcare for one hour. The candidate will make opening remarks, then take questions from a panel of journalists from PBS, NPR, The Wall Street Journal and ABC News.

The groups behind the events say their intention is to get the presidential candidates to offer detailed prescriptions for how they would reform the healthcare system.

“Rather than brief or meaningless sound bites, the forums will allow the candidates to explain how America’s healthcare system will change if they are elected in 2008,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.

“Not since 1992 has there been such a focus in the presidential campaign on healthcare,” said Federation of American Hospitals President Chip Kahn, who represented the insurance industry during the Clinton administration’s health reform fight at the time.