DEMOCRATIC DEBATE Here are the particulars of the Democratic presidential candidates debate. WHO: Vice President Al Gore, former Sen. Bill Bradley. WHEN: Monday, Jan. 18, 6-7:30 p.m. EST. WHERE: North High School, Des Moines, Iowa. SPONSORS: Democratic Black and Brown Forum. COVERAGE: MSNBC, WBUR-FM (90.9) will broadcast on tape delay, beginning at 7 p.m. MORE COVERAGE Democratic rivals joust on civil rights Excerpts from the debate Truth Squad report Black support key for Gore

Vice President Al Gore continued to misrepresent the details of his rival's Medicaid plan and Bill Bradley neglected to say the 600,000 new public school teachers he is promising would take a decade to arrive.

The sharpest difference between the two continues to concern health care.

Bradley wants to replace Medicaid, a system run by the states, with subsidies allowing people to buy health insurance from the system that serves federal employees.

Gore repeated his assertion that Bradley's plan would give them just $150 per month to buy a health plan. But the $150 figure is the average subsidy for a single person, not a family. A family actually would get $417 per month.

"That is a serious misrepresentation in this debate," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, who has been monitoring the debates.

Bradley also stretched the facts on health care, saying the new Children's Health Insurance Program isn't working because only a fraction of eligible children are enrolled.

The program, which just finished its second year, doubled enrollment in 1999 to about 2 million kids, but there isn't enough money to serve all of the eligible children anyway.

Plus, there's no guarantee that Bradley's plan, which would be administered by the federal government, would do a better job at signing families up for insurance. In fact, it might be harder, since managing it from Washington would create new challenges.

Gore promised to sign an executive order banning racial profiling, where police stop drivers or question certain people because of their race. But after the debate, Gore's own campaign noted that most law enforcement agencies are run by state and local governments and wouldn't be affected by a presidential order.

On education, Bradley touted his plan to put 600,000 "qualified, great teachers" into public schools. Jamieson called it an exaggeration. "He has no way to guarantee they are going to be qualified or great," she said.

And Bradley didn't mention that it would take 10 years to pay for all of them.

Moving to school vouchers, which provides public money for kids to go to private schools, Gore's camp made an error that Bradley didn't correct. Like many Democrats, Gore opposes school vouchers, saying they drain dollars from public schools, and he regularly notes that Bradley has supported a variety of voucher experiments.

Gore said in the debate that he was encouraged that Bradley now opposes vouchers. But, in fact, Bradley has not said he opposes them -- only that he doesn't think they are the answer to the problems of public education.

Both men noted several times that the debate was taking place on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Gore added that this was the first year that New Hampshire is calling its holiday just that. He credited Gov. Jeanne Shaheen -- one of his supporters -- for making it happen. But her Republican predecessor, Gov. Steve Merrill, also fought to name the holiday after the slain civil rights leader.

And while Gore tried for extra credit by noting that the first baby born in Iowa this year was black, it may have backfired. "Latino!" came a cry from the audience.

Indeed, Iowa's millennium birth was to a Latina woman.