A roundtable event Friday in Des Moines hosted by presidential candidate Dick Gephardt featured women discussing the high cost of health insurance. Sarah Swisher is an oncology nurse at the University of Iowa. Democrat Gephardt, a Missouri congressman, says rival candidates have criticized his 250-Billion-dollar healthcare plan as too costly, but says it would reduce hikes in insurance premiums Gephardt says people without healthcare still get sick, and when they go to emergency rooms every other consumer pays for their care through higher insurance premiums, so his program doesn’t cost as much as it seems because it gets rid of the problem of uncompensated care. Gephardt says health care is a number-one issue with people concerned about losing coverage and paying for it, and he says there are five strikes in progress around the country, all over health care. Gephardt says his plan would make employers extend healthcare coverage to all workers, even parttimers, and the federal government would pick up 60-percent of the cost. He’d also pay 60-percent of the insurance costs for retired or unemployed Americans. Gephardt says he’d pay for it by rolling back all of president Bush’s tax cuts.
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