Sen. John McCain has been repeatedly suggesting that his Democratic rivals are proposing a single-payer, or even a nationalized health-care system along the lines of those in such countries as Canada and Britain.

What the Democrats really say: While both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are calling for universal health care and an expanded role for government, they stop well short of calling for a single-payer plan. Clinton would require everyone have insurance and Obama would mandate coverage for children. Both would maintain the existing private insurance system.

A call for accuracy: McCain has made the assertion in recent days, even as he and the Republicans have called for accuracy on the campaign trail. They have been complaining that the Democrats were grossly distorting his position by suggesting that he favors a "100-year war" in Iraq, when he has simply said he would be fine with stationing troops there for 100 years as long as there were no more American casualties.

Evocative language? Yet on repeated occasions, McCain has inaccurately described the Democrats' health care proposals, using language that evokes the specter of socialized medicine." There are those that want a massive government takeover of the health care system," McCain warned Thursday, as he made the case for his more market-based approach. "Senator Clinton wants to make it mandatory, and, as I understand, they might even garnish somebody's wages if they didn't comply. ... And Senator Obama has basically the same kind of government massive intervention and takeover of health care."

Why he's doing it: Language, of course, is a potent weapon in the battle to shape policy. And McCain's effort to cast the Democrats' plans as a government takeover is just the latest example in a long tradition of using similar language to characterize proposals to change the health-care system, said Robert Blendon, a Harvard professor of health policy and political analysis.

"In the campaign, what Senator McCain tries to appeal to is a general antigovernment feeling, a sense that we shouldn't be doing things too big," he said. "In a sense he's appealing to a value that may or may not relate to the policies being discussed by either of the candidates."

NEW YORK TIMES