Two lawmakers recently promoted plans to establish universal health care for U.S. residents. Summaries appear below.Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah): Bennett spoke about the need to put the "health" back into "health care" during a meeting with members of the Utah Hospitals and Health Systems Association, the Deseret Morning News reports (Collins, Deseret Morning News, 9/2). Bennett was promoting a bill (S 334) sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that would guarantee health insurance to all U.S. residents. It would allow private health insurers to provide coverage to individuals directly, rather than through employers (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 8/14). In his remarks, Bennett said, "Congress has refused to address health care in an intelligent way in over a decade" (Deseret Morning News, 9/2).

Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.): Davis on Monday at a Central Alabama Labor Federation AFL-CIO rally said that the money being spent on the war in Iraq could be used to provide universal health care for U.S. residents, the Birmingham News reports. He said, "If we could re-orient the priorities of this country, get out of Iraq and put the resources to providing health care to our people and better schools for our children, we'd be on our way ... to being the more perfect union we need to be." Davis said he is supporting Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) bid for president partly because of his support for universal health care. Davis added that he believes all of the Democratic presidential candidates are open to the idea of universal coverage (Singleton, Birmingham News, 9/4). Reprinted with kind permission from kaisernetwork. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at kaisernetwork/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation© 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.