ANCHESTER, N.H. - Last weekend, Bill Bradley took Al Gore to task for his gradualist approach on expanding health care coverage, asking his rival again and again: ''Who would you leave out?''
Yesterday, the Bradley campaign provided its own answer: Melinda Berg of Hillsborough, Tim Chrysostum of Canterbury, and Abbi Orenstein of Manchester. The three, according to David Cutler, a Harvard economist advising Bradley, are among the 81,000 of New Hampshire's 94,000 uninsured people who would remain uninsured under Gore's health care plan.
''We can't afford to wait 10 or 20 years for health care,'' said Orenstein, 24, a temporary agency worker without insurance coverage. ''We need health care now.''
Gore's health care plan would start by insuring all children and their parents and then moving toward universal health care down the road. Bradley would attempt to cover most people by providing them with subsidies to purchase private health insurance.
By putting faces on the abstract policy debate, the Bradley campaign was borrowing a page from the Gore playbook. Gore's New Hampshire office has held several press conferences around the state this year with people who are disabled and rely on Medicaid for their health insurance. Those people have complained vociferously that Bradley's plan would eliminate Medicaid and replace it with an inferior alternative.
But yesterday it was the Bradley campaign's turn to worry aloud about Gore's plan.
''I've been fairly lucky, I've been healthy,'' said Chrysostum, a 32-year-old who works at the Canterbury Shaker Village. ''But I can't guarantee that will always be true, and at any moment I could be one of the large group of people who become seriously ill and have to be rushed to an emergency room without any way to pay for it.''
Meanwhile, the Gore campaign produced its own numbers, contending that over 100,000 of New Hampshire's Medicaid recipients would be left in the lurch under Bradley's plan.
''People are tired of politicians making promises they don't keep and Bradley's plan is one big promise he can't keep,'' said Douglas Hattaway, Gore's spokesman here.
Bush's dad played part for statistics
While campaigning at West High School this week, Texas Governor George W. Bush was asked about a federal report that said his state was the second worst in the country for the percentage of hungry households. Bush said he did not believe that 5 percent of Texas children are suffering from hunger.
''Yeah, I'm surprised a report floats out of Washington when I'm running a presidential campaign,'' he said. ''It seems like a lot of reports are floating out of Washington. You'd think the governor would have heard if there are pockets of hunger in Texas.''
It turns out that the report was spawned by the Federal Food Security Measurement Project with the charge to collect data annually to determine the amount of hunger in America. And the president who signed the law that created the project that churned out the report was the candidate's father, President George Bush.
Debates coming up early next year
Voters won't have long to wait before the first presidential debates of the new year on Jan. 5 and 6. People can watch the debates on a live web simulcast and answer questions from an online poll at www.wiredvote.com, a new site sponsored by a variety of New Hampshire corporations.
Al Gore and Bill Bradley will participate in the Jan. 5 debate, moderated by ABC's Peter Jennings. And the Republican candidates will participate in the Jan. 6 debate, moderated by NBC's Tim Russert. Both one-hour debates will be held at 7 p.m. at the University of New Hampshire and broadcast by New Hampshire Public Television, C-Span, New Hampshire Public Radio and a variety of ABC and PBS stations.
