Gore to criticize Bush plans on health care

Gore to criticize Bush plans on health care

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP): Republicans "have blood in their eyes," Vice President Al Gore warned as he tried to keep pace with Republican Party fund raising and rolled out an all-points critique of the policy agenda of Republican presidential rival George W. Bush.

Bush, the governor of Texas, should be embarrassed that uninsured Texans cross the border into Mexico to seek health care, Gore said at a Democratic National Committee fund-raiser on Tuesday night, winding up for his all-out slam of Bush's health proposals on Wednesday at a Hartford, Connecticut, senior center.

"He wants to take little vouchers that are a tiny part of what works in the private market and pretend that it's more than enough when it's hardly a down payment," Gore told about 130 contributors at the $5,000-per-plate salmon dinner.

"I don't know about you but I think it's embarrassing that in one of our states, people who need health care and can't get it in the United States of America have to go across the border to Mexico to get their health care. It happens every day in Texas."

Bush campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer, saying Gore's "credibility" was shining through, countered that Bush's proposed health reforms would instead help as many as 18 million low- income Americans gain health insurance.

Gore, on the other hand, "fails to explain why, since he was elected, there are 8 million more Americans without health insurance than when he took office. And he continues his campaign of exaggeration, misrepresentation and distortion," Fleischer said.

The DNC fund-raiser came on the eve of Wednesday night's Republican National Committee gala in Washington, which Bush will headline and help the party collect a record $18 million in one night.

"The other side," Gore warned, was braced "to throw everything including the kitchen sink into this and they've got blood in their eyes."

Meanwhile, in Ohio, which is closely watched by candidates and political parties because of its record of going for the winner in the November election, Bush led Gore by 9 points, 52 percent to 41 percent in a new Ohio Poll released today.

When third-party candidates Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader are included, Bush's lead drops to 47 percent to Gore's 39 percent.

The telephone poll of 521 voters by the University of Cincinnati was taken April 5 through Saturday and has an error margin of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.