Hillary's mad about Barack health care ad (Spin Cycle)

The Clinton campaign has launched an attack on a month-old Obama health care ad, calling on him to withdraw it in a letter (text after jump) and a press conference call because its claim that his health care plan would cover everyone is "false."

You can look at the ad, below. A few levels here. Clinton's health care plan requires that everyone buy health insurance, though it has no enforcement mechanism; Obama's plan merely tries to make it affordable in hopes that everyone will be able to buy it. Both plans would vastly expand coverage, but starting with her efforts to go on offense in the last debate, Clinton has been making a big deal of the difference. Now, Obama is coming on a bit in some polls, and she's casting him as a false advertiser.

Obama's aides are calling it all politics: "Our plan has been out there for months, and now [the Clinton people] are coming out with this?...That tells me they are either slow on the uptake or [campaign] circumstances have changed. And I don't think they're slow on the uptake."

Experts say that neither approach would be literally universal, but Clinton's approach would cover more. Here's a guy who doesn't like Obama's plan, and here's a guy who does. Some of Clinton's health claims, by the way, have also raised some accuracy questions. Here's the Obama ad that's now in dispute:

Letter from Clinton campaign manager to Obama campaign manager:

Dear David:
I am writing concerning a false advertisement you are currently airing, in which Sen. Obama claims that his health care plan would “cover everyone.” Your advertisement not only contradicts the judgment of health care experts, but public statements by your campaign and your candidate. Senator Obama has pledged to put “honesty first” in this campaign. In that spirit I respectfully request that you stop running this ad which is misleading voters in New Hampshire.
In today’s New York Times, noted Economist Paul Krugman wrote that Sen. Obama proposed “a relatively weak, incomplete health care plan. Although [Sen. Obama] declared, in his speech announcing the plan, that ‘my plan begins by covering every American,’ it didn’t — and he shied away from doing what was necessary to make his claim true.”
Health care author Jonathan Cohn looked at the data and concluded that, under the most optimistic scenario, Sen. Obama’s plan would leave “15 million people who are uninsured.” The Washington Post reached a similar conclusion, finding that Sen. Obama’s plan would not cover “a third” of the 47 million Americans who are currently uninsured.
Additionally, a constellation of the nation’s top health care experts – including MIT’s Jonathan Gruber, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Diane Rowland and the Urban Institute’s John Holland — have concluded that plans like Sen. Obama’s, which does not include a requirement for all Americans to have health care, would leave a substantial portion of the American public without coverage.
Even Sen. Obama himself has admitted that his plan would not cover everyone, calling the plan “virtually universal.” Your top health care advisor, David Cutler, acknowledged that Sen. Obama’s plan could leave “significant pockets” of people uninsured and said Sen. Obama would “deal with that when the time comes, possibly by mandating insurance.”
On an issue of this magnitude Americans are looking for more than a nice ad or a good speech. It’s not enough for Senator Obama to say he covers everyone, especially when that is inaccurate. The American people need a President who will take the action necessary and fight for healthcare for every single man woman and child. Until the time comes when Sen. Obama has a plan that will cover everyone, you should stop running this false advertisement. The American people deserve an honest debate about health care.

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