Here is a rundown on the plans by both candidates - both plans have three options for the provision of health care:
buy insurance on your own, continue to buy insurance through your employer, buy the same health care plans that government workers are entitled to purchase.

This is how Clinton's plan will work; the first two options are self-explanatory, but the third option will work just like FICA and SECA work now. Employers who offer health care plans to employees now are encouraged to continue to do so, just as employers who do not offer health care plans will be mandated to either provide plans or contribute to a fund that purchases health care plans in large numbers to discount costs of the health care. Small business owners, employers with a certain amount of workers below a threshhold will be given tax incentives and credits to enable them to contribute to the fund. Employers who choose to offer the same plan as government workers will collect premiums in the same way that FICA and SECA are collected now - the employer will remit the premiums gathered to the fund in a timely manner. The premiums will be deducted from the employee's pay period, whether the employer will be required to contribute to the premiums would be a negotiated point. The enforcement will work exactly the same way as enforcement mechanisms work for mandated FICA and SECA do today - by statute.
The reason mandates are necessary for "health care for everyone" to work is that 1., it spreads the risk among a widely diverse group, young, old, sick, healthy, children and adults, 2., if we are to move to a universal health care system in this country people must be conditioned [my word] to understand that universal health care can only be implemented if every person contributes something to the fund, just like other major industrial nations tax their citizens for health care. There will be no free health care for anyone in this nation, just as there is no free health care for anyone in any nation - whether it is funded by taxes or individual worker contributions, it must be funded. Let me repeat that, there will be no free health care, 3., medicare, medicaid and Schip will remain in place, and those meeting a certain threshhold of income will receive tax credits or rebates in the same manner as they do federal income tax rebates and credits now, when they file their income tax forms the following year.

The reason Senator Clinton offers this health care policy is that nationally we cannot move from a privatized health care system to a universal health care system overnight. It would devastate a major financial sector of our economy. It would throw hundreds of thousands of workers out of jobs, it would cut off or slow investment funds to the economy and it would have a snowball effect on financial institutions and their markets and it would have repercussions and consequences throughout the U.S. economy for which planning must be made and solutions must be found.

Mandates are the only fair way to spread risk, just as mandates are the only fair way to spread risk in our national pension plan/social security. Like social security if it was not mandated only those approaching retirement age would contribute to the plan, in health care without mandates only the sick and older workers would purchase health care plans.

Obama's plan calls for childrens' health care only to be mandated. This will not work, because there is no enforcement mechanism available to mandate children's health care. Schip and Medicaid are not mandated health care plans, they are qualified plans - the user must qualify and meet a means test in order to receive the benefits. That would preclude all children but the most poverty stricken from receiving benefits which is already tenuous at best and already provided by the states with federal contributions. Incentives do not work, because no matter how attractive that incentive is, there will be a large segment that prefers risk to protection, and invariably that segment is either blithely unaware of the risk and its impact on society or they are aware and they don't care about the impact on society. In any interdependent society, all members are responsible for the risk, not just the individual who assumes the risk because the risk involves other members of a society. That is why we have mandatory building codes, mandatory car insurance, mandatory safety regulations of industries and mandated contributory workers' compensation plans(to name a few) so that
risk is mitigated and spread to all participants.