Is universal health insurance on the horizon?

WASHINGTON —It isn’t streamlined, it isn’t logical, but America’s cobbled-together system of paying for medical care does cover 85 percent of the population.

And despite the chorus of pleas for a sweeping redesign of America's medical insurance system as the 2008 presidential race heats up, a top-to-bottom makeover seems less likely than a series of reforms that aims to fill in gaps in coverage