Report sides with Obama's healthcare plan

NEW YORK, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- A report issued Thursday said Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Barack Obama's healthcare plan is better than that offered by Republican John McCain.

The report by the Commonwealth Fund outlined the two candidate's healthcare plans and evaluated their respective proposals.

"Senators John McCain and Barack Obama would place the nation's health system on very different paths, with profound implications for the American people," a statement from the Commonwealth Fund said.

The report noted that Obama is proposing a mixed private-public group insurance with a shared responsibility for financing.

The Illinois senator's plan "has greater potential to move the healthcare system toward high performance than does McCain's proposal to encourage individual market coverage through the use of tax incentives and deregulation."

In 10 years, McCain's proposal would reduce the number of people who are uninsured by 2 million out of a projected 67 million, while Obama's plan would reduce the number of uninsured people by 34 million, the report said.

"The presidential candidates' health care reform proposals offer fundamentally different visions of the future of health insurance in the United States," the report said.