RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – Mayor Giuliani, a Republican candidate for president, on Friday accused his Democratic rivals of embracing health care plans that would amount to socialized medicine.

The former New York City mayor, responding to comments in the first Democratic primary debate Thursday night, claimed Democrats favor “mandatory” universal health care and the plans would only exacerbate the cost of care by putting the system in the hands of bureaucrats.

“They’re moving toward socialized medicine so fast, it’ll make your head spin,” Mr. Giuliani said, adding that private solutions could help bring down the cost of care. “When we want to cover poor people, as we should, we give them vouchers.”

Democratic candidates renewed their calls for universal health care during a debate in South Carolina, saying that a new system would help streamline costs and cover the nation’s 45 million uninsured.

Among the top-tier Democratic candidates, John Edwards has offered a specific health care plan that would require everyone to have health insurance.

Senator Obama, Democrat of Illinois, used the debate to describe a health care plan that would increase coverage by allowing the uninsured to buy into a plan similar to the one for federal employees, improve technology to cut costs and provide government-funded catastrophic insurance to prevent business from going bankrupt when they offer health insurance.

Senator Clinton of New York has not offered a specific proposal, saying she is still listening to voters on the issue.
>[?”I’ll be darned if I’m going to concede that Democrats care more about poor people than we do,” Mr. Giuliani told an audience of the North Carolina Conservative Leadership Conference during a brief trip to the home state of Mr. Edwards, who has made fighting poverty a signature issue.

Earlier this week, Mr. Giuliani, who was mayor during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, drew a sharp rebuke from the Democratic candidates for suggesting that America could face another major attack if a Democrat is elected in 2008. He didn’t back down from the comments.

He stood by those remarks Friday and said Democratic presidential candidates, most of whom want to begin timed troop withdrawals from Iraq, are “retreating in the face of this terrorist threat.”

“When, in the history of war, has a nation that decides to retreat, printed up a schedule of that retreat and handed it to its enemies?” Mr. Giuliani said at the event, hosted by the Civitas Institute, a Raleigh-based conservative think tank.