Healthcare-related observations from last night's cordial one-on-one debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama:

• As (uncannily!) foreseen in this space yesterday, Clinton seized on former candidate John Edwards' universal healthcare plan as similar to her own--presumably making her heir to the mantle of coverage-for-all.
• Obama argued, as he usually does, that Clinton's plan includes a mandate that everybody buy health insurance, which could burden the people most in need of help.
• Clinton said $45 million of the cost of her plan would come from non-renewal of the Bush administration's tax breaks for those making more than $250,000 per year. The remaining $55 million would be made up for with savings from efficiencies, new technologies and other provisions of her plan. Obama said his people had done the math and her figures don't add up. 
• Obama said he would have drug companies at the table when lawmakers discuss whether the federal government should be allowed to bargain for the price of drugs for the Medicare program--and televise the negotiations on C-SPAN, where the public could follow the action. (The writers' strike may have to continue forever in order for that particular show to get an audience, but the  piont of government transparency is well-taken.) 
• Clinton cited a Rand Corp. ("no bastion of liberal thinking") study that estimated cost savings of $77 billion per year if electronic medical records were adopted by 90 percent of doctors, hospitals and clinics. (The report said savings would be $81 billion, but in healthcare $4 billion is little more than a rounding error.)

Nothing, as far as I could tell, was said that would likely tip the healthcare voter toward either candidate.

If I were a betting man (I'm not) I'd wager that the wedge between them on healthcare will remain the individual coverage mandate.

If you missed the debate, here's a clip of some good healthcare exchanges from CNN.