US President George W. Bush spent Thursday battling to take Pennsyl-vania out of the Democratic column by seeking support from Roman Catholic voters and mocking Sena-tor John Kerry's health care plan as an "overpriced albatross."
Bush struck the themes in a daylong swing through a state that Al Gore won in 2000 and where Kerry has held a slight lead in polls.
PHOTO: AP
Pennsylvania is widely considered as essential to Kerry's prospects of winning an Electoral College majority as Florida is to Bush's chances.
PHOTO: AP
It was Bush's 40th trip to Pennsylvania since becoming president, and he was to appear in the state again yesterday, rebutting talk among Democrats that he is preparing to concede its 21 electoral votes.
With about a third of the voters in the state Catholic, one of the highest proportions in the country, Bush arranged to meet Cardinal Justin Rigali, the head of the Philadelphia Archdiocese who has been quoted as saying Catholics have a "duty and responsibility" to vote for candidates who uphold church teachings, especially those opposing abortion.
The meeting was closed to reporters, and the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said only that the two men discussed "shared priorities."
And on a day when Kerry went hunting in Ohio to shore up, as his aides put it, his "guy" credentials, Bush made a particular appeal to women by emphasizing how his plan to limit awards from suits against doctors would help address the difficulties that some regions have in keeping obstetricians and gynecologists.
Appearing in Downingtown, outside Philadelphia, Bush stepped up his attack on Kerry's health plan, saying it was bloated and would put control over medical decisions in the hands of federal bureaucrats.
"The Kerry plan would move America down the road toward federal control of health care, which would lead to lower quality and health care rationing," Bush said. "Other countries have tried centralized health care, and it didn't work. We have great quality health care in America because it is a private-centered system, and I intend to keep it that way."
Kerry's campaign shot back that Bush's record on health care included adding 5 million people to the rolls of the uninsured, big increases in health insurance premiums and high prescription drug prices. Kerry's aides said Bush was again mischaracterizing Kerry's plan, under which the government would pay three-quarters of the cost of the most expensive claims and allow more families to obtain care through Medicaid.
In his speeches, Bush cited excessive malpractice awards against doctors as a cause of rising health costs and blamed litigation for driving some doctors to abandon their practices, especially in specialties like obstetrics that are particularly prone to malpractice claims.
He used that phenomenon to make a case that women would do well to support his approach. Bush has been seeking all year to eat into the traditional Democratic advantage among women, but polls suggest that after some success he has again lost ground to Kerry.
"You have a problem here in the state of Pennsylvania because of these junk lawsuits," Bush told the thousands of people who waited in the rain here to hear him at a rally in a football stadium.
"You're losing too many good docs. Too many ob-gyn's are leaving the practice. Too many pregnant women are wondering whether or not they're going to get the health care they need in order to bring their child into this world," he said.
If suburban women are a pivotal constituency in Pennsylvania, Catholics are another. Kerry, a Catholic, has been under attack from some conservative bishops for his support of abortion rights, and the Bush campaign and its allies have directly and indirectly encouraged church leaders, from Pope John Paul II down, to make clear their stand on the issue.
Asked about the meeting between the cardinal and Bush, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia issued a statement saying that it had been held "at the request of the president" and that Rigali had "indicated his willingness to meet with both presidential candidates."
The cardinal has not met Kerry, though the archdiocese said the senator had expressed an interest in doing so.
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