Clinton Sees Lessons in Past Failure

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., smiles as supporters as she waits to speak about her health care policy, Monday, Sept. 17, 2007, at Broadlawns Medical Center in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall) (Charlie Neibergall - AP)

On her health care plan, Clinton said she planned to enforce the mandate to purchase health care through tax credits and other incentives.

"At this point, we don't have anything punitive that we have proposed," she said. But she said she could envision a day when "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview _ like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination."

Such details would be worked out later through negotiations with Congress, she said.

The individual mandate _ and how to enforce it _ has been a flash point in the debate over how to bring health care to all. Massachusetts enacted a universal health care law this year that included such a mandate to be enforced through fines and tax penalties. But the state has already exempted 20 percent of the population from purchasing insurance because of its cost.

Clinton said she had studied the Massachusetts model but felt the federal government had tools at its disposal that states don't have to help make insurance more affordable.

"We're going to have a transition period. This is not going to happen immediately and be implemented immediately," she said.

Republicans have been quick to criticize Clinton's plan. Campaigning in Florida on Tuesday, Mitt Romney denounced it despite similarities to the one he signed into law while governor of Massachusetts, saying that he never said the state plan was good for the whole country.

"I think when she hears that there are corporations making a profit, she shudders," Romney said in a speech. "She thinks, 'If we can just take that profit away, as the government could, then we would have a better product, a lower-cost product.'"

Romney said that competition and profit incentive is what creates better health care. "Instead of saying each state should create a plan, as I've proposed, she says 'Oh, no! I know best. Washington knows best.'"

Clinton said she looked forward to tangling with her rivals over health policy, including Republicans "who understood that we had to reform health care before they started running for president."

On Tuesday, Clinton began airing a 30-second ad statewide in Iowa and New Hampshire promoting her new health care plan. The ad reminds viewers of her failed effort to pass universal health care in the early 1990s, trying to portray a thwarted enterprise as one of vision.

"She changed our thinking when she introduced universal health care to America," the ad's announcer says.

Though her ads are airing in major markets in both states, they are appearing with greater frequency in Iowa, where polls show her in a tight contest with Obama and Edwards

Meanwhile, a new national poll indicated a majority of Democrats believe Clinton would do a better job addressing health care should she be elected president than the other major candidates.

Sixty-one percent of likely Democratic primary voters said they are confident in how she would handle the issue, according to a CBS News poll. That compared to 42 percent who expressed that view of Obama and 39 percent who said so about Edwards.

The poll was conducted from Sept. 14 to 16 and involved telephone interviews with 706 adults, including 289 Democratic primary voters. The margin of sampling error for the Democrats was plus or minus 6 percentage points.

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Associated Press writers Nedra Pickler, Jim Kuhnhenn and Alan Fram in Washington and Brendan Farrington Florida contributed to this report.