In one substantive moment, an audience member asked the candidates if they believe that healthcare should be a commodity sold by the for-profit insurance industry. Both Obama and McCain avoided answering the question directly. In a follow-up, moderator Tom Brokaw of NBC News asked if they believe healthcare is a right, a responsibility or a privilege. While McCain answered he sees it as a responsibility, Obama said healthcare is a right.

Sen. Barack Obama: “I think it should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can’t pay their medical bills — for my mother to die of cancer at the age of fifty-three and have to spend the last months of her life in a hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a preexisting condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

Obama has endorsed a mandate-style approach to healthcare, instead of the single-payer model favored by a majority of Americans.