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In doing so, Edwards is resurrecting the ghosts of past presidential campaigns. Among the Democrats who have pushed for universal health coverage were Harry Truman in 1948, George McGovern in 1972 and Ted Kennedy in 1980.

The Edwards plan would require every American to have health insurance by 2012 -- the last year of Edwards' first term if he were elected. The plan would first make health care available to everyone and then require people to carry health insurance, just as motorists must have liability insurance.

The plan is mix of public and private strategies. Employers would be required to either provide insurance to their employees through a company policy, or to help fund coverage for their workers by contributing to regional nonprofit government entities that Edwards calls health markets.

"Everyone in America will be required by law to be covered by this health-care plan," Edwards said.

The health markets would use the economy of scale to negotiate affordable policies through insurers.Uninsured individuals could obtain coverage through a health market. So could employers seeking to provide group policies for their employees.

Insurance companies would be required to sell coverage at a fair price regardless of a person's medical history or pre-existing condition; what constitutes a fair price has yet to be determined. Insurers would also be required to offer mental health benefits.

Health markets would offer traditional plans from private companies such as Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Aetna and Cigna, as well as a government-run plan similar to Medicare, the federal health-insurance program for the elderly. The public-sector plan would resemble Canada's single-payer system, in which insurance is publicly funded to control costs but doctors and hospitals remain private.

"The idea is to determine whether Americans actually want a private insurer or whether they would rather have a government-run ... single-payer plan," Edwards said. "We'll find out over time where people go."

The mix of market and government initiatives makes Edwards' plan much harder to attack than Clinton's early 1990s plan, said Leif Wellington Haase of the Century Foundation, a liberal-leaning think tank.

"In this plan, the changes happen much more gradually," Haase said. "Each element has a market element that deflects the attack. I think it's a very smart political document."

'A slippery slope'

Although Haase thinks the Edwards plan does not go far enough, conservatives fear it would take the country too far toward government-run care.

"It sets up a slippery slope to move toward a single-payer, government-run health care system," said Mike Tanner of the Cato Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. "He realizes that Americans are not going to take that in one bite."

Tanner contends that under Edwards' parallel system, private insurance would be unable to compete with a taxpayer-funded system.

The single-payer system, Tanner argued, sounds good. But it would not be popular with citizens because it would ration treatment for expensive and long illnesses, and would discourage pharmaceutical companies from developing new drugs.

"Single-payer systems are good if you are not sick," Tanner said. "They provide routine care at low cost. But they don't provide intensive, expensive medicine for people with serious illnesses."

Edwards argues that the current system needs fixing. His campaign reports that 18,000 Americans die each year because they lack access to medical care. An estimated 47 million Americans are uninsured. In addition, he adds, businesses are struggling with medical costs, and people are finding it harder to change jobs because of the lack of affordable insurance.

Edwards is also proposing tax credits to make it easier for people of modest means to buy insurance through the health markets. His plan would expand Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, and State Children's Health Insurance Program, also known as SCHIP. Edwards says his plan would sharply reduce health-care costs because administrative costs for health markets would be lower than those of insurance companies.

Conspicuously missing from Edwards' plan are such Republican-backed ideas as individual Medical Savings Accounts or tort reform to reduce lawsuits against doctors.

Edwards is the only candidate to put a price tag on his health reforms -- $90 billion to $120 billion per year -- which he proposes to pay for by repealing the tax cuts pushed through by President Bush on families with a taxable income of more than $200,000 per year.

"I do not believe you can have universal health care without finding a source of revenue," Edwards said.

Everywhere he goes on the campaign trail, Edwards talks about his health insurance plan. He notes that his wife, Elizabeth, does not have to worry about insurance or the cost of drugs.

"One of the reasons that I want to be president of the United States," Edwards said, "is to make sure that every woman and every person in America gets the same things that we have."

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