EVERY Democratic candidate for President has a plan for "universal" health-care coverage, which is a euphemism for socialized health insurance. They obviously think this is a winning issue. Yesterday Rudy Giuliani came to Rochester to offer a smarter alternative.

Giuliani wants to use the power of free markets to reduce health-care costs and make insurance more affordable and more widely available.

"America's health-care system is being dragged down by decades of government-imposed mandates and wasteful, unaccountable bureaucracy," he said. "To reform, we must empower all Americans by increasing health-care choices and affordability, while bringing accountability to the system."

Giuliani's health care proposal has some familiar ideas, such as expanding Health Savings Accounts, reforming medical liability laws and offering a tax credit for health insurance not purchased through an employer. Each of these sound ideas has been pushed by the Bush administration.

It also has some less familiar ones, such as bypassing state coverage mandates by allowing people to purchase basic health insurance through interstate markets.

Giuliani's plan is innovative and, if implemented, would achieve much of what the Democrats want, but for less money and with greater individual freedom.

It should be noted that he is not the only Republican candidate touting market-based health-care reform. But he is doing so more aggressively, directly challenging the Democrats on the issue. (Mitt Romney has done this to a lesser extent.)

Other Republican candidates need to follow Giuliani's lead and play up their market-based approach to health-care reform. Socialized medicine is a terrible idea. But it will be the only idea if its opponents don't challenge it more aggressively.