Although the third-party candidates are very unlikely to win the presidential election, they have not forgotten the issues.Harry Browne, Patrick Buchanan and Ralph Nader all have their stance on issues such as health care, abortion and foreign policy.Browne, a Libertarian, wants to remove the government between patients and their doctors. According to his website, he believes by getting the federal government completely out of health care there will be more choices, better health care, lower doctor visits and health insurance.”Before the federal government intruded into health care in the 1960s, health care cost a fraction of today’s prices, hospital stays didn’t cost a year’s wages, health insurance was a lot less expensive and accessible to virtually everyone, and doctors even made house calls,” Browne said in a written statement.He said health care prices have increased because government subsidies push up the demand for medical services, while government regulations chase medical suppliers out of the market.Buchanan’s view on health care is that it must be reformed, but herding patients into a socialized system dominated by HMOs and brokered by a big business-big government partnership is not the answer, according to his web site.He said the best way to cure the American health care system is to allow workers to invest in personal insurance accounts that will be private and portable, affordable and accessible. Government bureaucracy will not ration its benefits and a third party will not manage its care, Buchanan said. Coupled with low-cost catastrophic insurance, private accounts offer the assurance that a major illness or accident will not result in massive debt or bankruptcy, while increasing access for low-income families.Nader said he feels health care in the United States is a disgrace to democracy. Access to health care is distributed unequally among the rich and poor and among the races, according to his web site.He said health care should be provided by a national health insurance program providing comprehensive benefits to all Americans, funded directly by the federal government.On the issue of abortion, Browne said he believes abortion is wrong. He also said involving the federal government in areas for which it has no constitutional authority is wrong.According to his web site, Browne said he does not believe states should outlaw abortion because the president has no authority in this regard.”My position on abortion is far less important than my understanding that government is not the answer to social problems,” he said in a written statement.He said he believes as with any other problem, only a program of education and persuasion, undertaken voluntarily by individuals, not government, can work.Buchanan said he believes that life begins at conception, according to his website. “Mother Teresa called abortion ‘a war against the child.’ The silent screams of these innocent unborn beckons us to battle, and we must fight on–for the sake of our children and the soul of our country,” Buchanan said.Nader supports the National Organization for Women, which supports access to safe and legal abortion, to effective birth control and to reproductive health and education. It opposes attempts to restrict these rights through legislation, regulation or Constitutional amendment.On the issue of foreign policy, Browne said that the United States has a “weak national defense–unable to defend us from any two-bit dictator who can get his hands on a nuclear missile.”He said the United States only needs a proper defense against missiles.”War is almost always the first resort of politicians, but it should be the last resort of a free people,” Browne said.Buchanan said that defenses must be rebuilt, troops’ morale restored, credibility reclaimed by a consistent foreign policy that decides independently when, where, and whether we go into battle.”Only then will America fulfill the vision of her founders, and endure as a republicnot an empire.”In terms of foreign policy, Nader said it is important to have a lean defense; a wasteful defense is a lean defense. “That’s one thing we’re not learning enough from–mistakes from the past, successes from the past,” Nader said in an interview with Jim Lehrer.
For more information log on to these web siteswww.harrybrowne.comwww.buchananreform.comwww.votenader.com