OLLYWOOD, Fla. - Al Gore yesterday said his ideas for improving the nation's health care system are closer to Republican John McCain's than Bill Bradley's, his challenger for the Democratic nomination.
''McCain and I have in common putting money from the surplus into Medicare and keeping it from being drawn down when the baby boomers retire,'' Gore told reporters aboard Air Force Two. ''McCain recognizes, as I do, that you should put money in the program. Bradley's assertion is that it is not needed,'' he said.
His comments about McCain, which as usual came at the expense of Bradley, are his most extensive since both men won the New Hampshire primary. Gore made the remarks as he flew from New York to Florida, a state with the one of the nation's largest populations of older residents and where he is counting on drawing his sharpest distinctions yet with Bradley on health care.
Gore told more than 700 senior citizens at Century Village, a retirement community in Pembroke Pines, that the former New Jersey senator has a health care plan that would eat up the budget surplus and leave nothing for shoring up Medicare, which he said would become insolvent in 2015.
''Most all the experts in both political parties have said, `let's put money in now.' That's a key difference between Senator Bradley and myself,'' Gore said.
He also knocked Bradley for proposing to replace Medicaid with an ''inadequate'' private insurance system. In sum, he said, Bradley's health care plan ''does not get to universal health insurance, does not shore up the finances of Medicare but does eliminate Medicaid in favor of an inadequate substitute.''
Gore, then added, ''I think that's shortsighted, and I think it's especially important in a state like Florida where Medicare is even more important than in the average state because of the population of seniors in Florida who depend upon Medicare very heavily.''
Gore found a particularly receptive audience for his argument, drawing wild cheers from the seniors by promising to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. That promise resonated with Bonnie Steinhart, a 72-year-old resident of Century Village who also lives part-time in Connecticut. She said she had just paid $69 for seven antibiotic pills that she could neither afford nor do without. Gore, she said, has her vote.
''We're seniors,'' said Jerry Engelberg, 80. ''Anyone who's talking to us about Medicare and prescription drugs, whether he's going to accomplish what he thinks he's going to accomplish or not, I'm going to vote for him.''
Gore said that over the next 25 years, the number of seniors in Florida is expected to more than double - from 2.6 million people over 65 to 5.4 million. He says his health plan would devote $300 billion of the federal budget surplus to shore up the Medicare Trust Fund.
In his comments to reporters, Gore said Bradley has said that the Medicare insolvency problem may be resolved because of changing lifestyles, people living longer, eating better and exercising more, adding sarcastically, ''maybe all streams run downhill.''
Gore later flew to Tampa, where he held a town hall-style meeting with undecided voters. Upon landing there, Air Force Two made a sudden stop after the air traffic control tower spotted what it thought was fuel coming off the plane's wings. But, after holding up the plane for 10 minutes, it turned out to be a false alarm.
