Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) joined former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) tonight in his criticism of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) universal health care plan. Both senators attacked Obama for not including mandates in his proposal:

Clinton: “I think the whole idea of universal health care is such a core Democratic principle… I’m not going to start leaving 15 million Americans out of healthcare.”

Clinton also accused Obama of flip-floping on health care, arguing that he had supported a single-payer program as a candidate for the Senate and that his current proposal is not truly universal.

Clinton: “I’m not running for president to put band aids on our problems! I want every single American to have health care.

Obama disputed Clinton’s characterization: “I never said we should go ahead and try to get single payer. What I said was if we started from scratch…I would probably go with a single payer system. What has evolved is your presentation of my positions…”

UPDATE: According to the New Yorker, Clinton’s characterization is inaccurate.

If you’re starting from scratch,’ he [Obama] says, ‘then a single-payer system’-a government-managed system like Canada’s, which disconnects health insurance from employment-’would probably make sense. But we’ve got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that’s not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they’ve known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.

UPDATE II: Obama at YearlyKos from a video posted on Clinton’s own YouTube channel: “If I were designing the system from scratch, I would go with a single payer system.”

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