Lisa Appleby of USA Today compares and contrasts the leading Presidential candidates' positions on health care reform. 

Concerns about health costs and the uninsured will help make this "the first presidential election that will have a good share of the campaign fought around health care," says Tommy Thompson, former secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bush.

It's unclear how that political fight will take shape — and whether any plan from the next president will survive through Congress. Health policy analysts say the battle lines already in place over the future of the health care system will offer Americans a stark choice in the November election.

Health care consultant Robert Laszewski and Drew Altman, president of the non-partisan Kaiser foundation, and others describe three major areas in which the candidates and their two parties split:

• The Democratic candidates want to cover all or nearly all people, often by expanding government programs. McCain says worry about costs first and expand coverage later.
• McCain and many congressional Republicans would not require anyone to buy insurance or make insurers sell to those with existing medical problems. Democrats would require most, if not all, people to have insurance and insist that insurers sell to everyone who applies.
• Republicans would lean more on tax incentives to get people to buy their own insurance and less on coverage through their jobs. Democrats would bolster the current system of employer coverage.

Senator McCain is looking to make healthcare more affordable to those who currently have coverage and those who can't yet afford to purchase it, while leaving the option of coverage up to individuals - not the federal government.  One of the major pitfalls of the other candidates' positions is that it would force the young and healthy to essentially subsidize insurance for the older and infirm by requiring everyone to purchase coverage - McCain's plan leaves open free choice and would use tax incentives to make it affordable.

Abandoning proven principles of market-based free choice is a recipe for disaster, creating increase cost and decreased consumer choice for coverage.