Clinton, Obama differ slightly on health plans For both, reducing the number of people without health insurance is a priority.

Both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama say they want to help the kind of people who filled a health clinic waiting room in Bensalem on a recent morning.

Twenty uninsured patients were at the BCHIP office in a strip shopping center where a doctor and nurse treated their diabetes, asthma, and liver and heart problems for free.

Patients included a waiter who doesn't work enough hours to qualify for insurance, a health worker whose employers for the last two years have not offered affordable benefits, and men on the cusp of Medicare who lost their jobs, and health insurance, late in life.

"I worry from day to day how we're going to survive," said Irene Farr, 42, a cook, who came with her husband, Donald, 57, a disabled construction worker. Between them, they make $24,000 a year.

Like others in the room, Irene Farr wants the country's next president to make insurance affordable.

Sens. Obama and Clinton both say they would. They make reducing the number of people without health insurance - 47 million - a cornerstone of their health plans. Their approaches are so similar that some health experts say this is not the issue that will help most voters decide between the two Democrats. The real fireworks will come in the fall when one of them faces Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, whose proposal is starkly different and represents a greater departure from the status quo.

For now, Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said, "the differences between the Clinton and Obama plans mean much more to experts than to voters."

Both Clinton and Obama say they want to build on the current mix of public and private health insurance to make coverage universal and affordable. Both say they would offer tax subsidies to help people buy insurance, require most employers to help pay for insurance, and limit insurance company profits. Individuals and small businesses could join big groups to buy private insurance or a Medicare-like public plan.

The big difference between the two is that Clinton would require everyone to have health insurance and Obama would mandate it only for children.

"Our plan is not a universal access plan," Clinton policy director Neera Tanden said in a swipe at Obama's plan. "It's a universal coverage plan."