John Edwards is a very serious man.
He is very serious about his hair.
He is very serious about doing his part on global warming - adding to it by generating a carbon footprint the size of Rhode Island.
He is very serious about helping the poor - believing that by getting rich using junk science and New Age mumbo jumbo when suing doctors and then plowing his winnings into hedge funds, he can impoverish others thus adding to the poor’s numbers.
He is very serious about running for President. Just exactly who or what he wants to be President of might be a little hazy:
Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.
“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”
He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat “the first trace of problem.” Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.
Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.
“The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death,” he said.
One can immediately see the problem with this birth to death, “Health Care at the Point of a Bayonet” program the former Senator and Breck Girl has come up with. It’s not the cost of the program itself that would bust the treasury. It’s creating the National Health Care Police Force to make sure his diktats about going to doctors and having your head examined on a regular basis are enforced. Perhaps this is how Silky Pony intends to fight terrorism? Send the Doctor Police overseas and force al-Qaeda recruits to see their local shrink. I’ll bet half of the jihadis are committed on the spot.
I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop in Edwards’ “Gun to Your Head” preventive health care proposal; what will be the penalties for not going to the doctor when Nanny Sam says you must? Perhaps Edwards can come up with something unique and politically viable at the same time. Instead of using animals to test new drugs and new surgical techniques, why not punish American citizens who fail to follow orders about going to the doctor by making them the guinea pigs? Better that scofflaw doctor avoiders suffer the side effects of bad drugs than poor helpless rats. This would please his PETA supporters to no end while being a big help to Big-Pharm who no doubt will embrace any program that puts so many potential customers within spitting distance of a doctor, most of whom received their medical degrees with free drug samples attached.
Althouse has this pegged correctly:
And I predict Edwards will, within a day, chide us for misunderstanding what he meant by “require” and that “require” doesn’t mean you’ll be forced, only that the big bad medical establishment will be required to provide.
Just like “misunderstanding” Jane Hamsher putting Joe Lieberman in black face. We rubes are just too unsophisticated to get all this “nuance” don’t you know?
5:05 pm
Steel, mine workers unions back Edwards
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John Edwards won the endorsement of the United Steelworkers and the United Mine Workers of America a…
5:13 pm
If John Edwards ever had to face the day he had someone following him around with the “football” in a briefcase, he would wet himself due to loss of bladder control.
5:30 pm
What kind of freak would object to free or reasonably priced health care? If they say decline, we know they can be fast-tracked into the mental health portion of the screening.
6:02 pm
If all of his previous pontifications weren’t sufficient reason for calling him on “jumping the shark” this most certainly is!
Isn’t time to guffaw quietly and ignore the idiot? I mean, it’s not like he has any chance of winning either the nomination or the general, so why not ignore him?
It appears most of the MSM is starting to, though that may be to stop his more idiotic positions from getting too much airtime.
6:14 pm
This seems a little extreme. We have a requirement to go for, say, smear tests at regular intervals. The penalty for missing them is a letter in six months time reminding you that you missed your smear. We have the same for breast screening, the penalty being exactly the same.
The relevant point is that such things are provided by default with the expectation that you will attend, and most people do.
And we know that you have a clearer mind than to honestly believe what you wrote. You know full well what he meant in this case.
6:22 pm
It is not a question of whether it would make people healthier. The left is always weeping about giving up “liberty” (a concept they don’t understand) for security. How about giving up liberty for health?
It is not a question of whether I exaggerated a lot in order to make a singular point.
The point is simple, direct, and I wouldn’t expect a foreigner to understand it:
John Edwards proposal is an affront to liberty, the essence of which is choice. I don’t care if the “penalties” are mild or not. The idea that compulsion of any kind is involved smacks of tyranny.
The left doesn’t get it. They gave up on liberty long ago. And foreigners don’t understand this concept of liberty quite the way we Americans think about it.
7:19 pm
jpe Said:
“What kind of freak would object to free or reasonably priced health care? If they say decline, we know they can be fast-tracked into the mental health portion of the screening.”
So if we’re healthy and say we don’t NEED to see a doctor, fast-track us into psych evals, jpe? Is that what you’re saying?
You miss the point entirely. The issue isn’t free health care. The issue is compulsion. People can refuse medical treatment in this country and always have been able to. If chump don’t want no help, chump don’t get no help. Consequences are the patients.
What should we have, a medical concentration camp for medical care dissidents, jpe? Or are you just an Edwards campaigner standing by your well-coiffed guy?
1:23 am
“I don’t care if the “penalties†are mild or not. The idea that compulsion of any kind is involved smacks of tyranny.”
What, the liberty not to get a letter? My point, equally simple, is that the penalty of getting a letter reminding you to attend is *not* a penalty in any meaningful sense.
But then I’m a foreigner, so what would I know…
6:11 am
Skipping the content, and focusing on the entry title:
I’m an American who’s been living in Dresden, Germany for the past 2 years, and, yes, there are still problems here, but many of the German people I’ve met struggle with the opinion that the world has of them, based on what happened here in the 20th century.
The title of your post does nothing to help. This kind of German-bashing goes on in the American media every day - just turn on your TV and watch for a while (I did, on my last visit to America). How would you like it if every time someone mentioned Americans, they made cheap, obvious references to slavery? You’d be pissed off.
I really enjoy reading this site every day. Please Rick, think before you type something like that.
7:10 am
When my father died at age 69 (two months short of his 70th birthday)from combination of heart failure bought about during the attempt to control his stage four terminal lung cancer I learned that ‘preventative care’ does not prevent disease and death. He was a longtime health nut ie bi-annual medical checkups, daily exercise and meditation, moderate wine drinker, non-smoker, kept his weight just below normal and ate all the correct foods yet two months after one of his bi-annual physical it was discovered he had stage four terminal lung cancer then died three months after diagnoses. He also used to mock and ridicule smokers and fat people for their ‘unhealthly’ lifestyle. The hardest thing to watch during is last months was his confusion in that he could not understand how this had happened to him, afterall he had invested a great deal of money and time in preventative care as he was planning to live to the age of 110.
If disease is genetic then no amount of ‘preventative care’ is going to alter the possibility that I will probably die of some cancer or heart-related issue no matter what I do; if it’s not genetic then I’ll probably die of something else.
My point is even if the government were to take away our personal liberty by requiring ‘preventative care’ we will still have to contend with incurable death and disease so why impose Collectivism in order to save us.
12:36 pm
Sorry, Dresden, but this is _exactly_ the sort of analogy that needs to be made. Frankly, I think that most of the time Nazi references (BusHitler forex)demean the monsterous crimes committed against Jews and others. Not so here.
This is exactly the first step that was called for by backers of the Eugenics Movement in the early 20th century. To create a healthier society in which society’s resources were best used people should be tested. _Forced_ to undergo examination.
Alexander Graham Bell thought that he saw a disproportinate rate of deafness in Martha’s Vineyard. He thought that the best way to insure the public health was to prvent people who came from families with a high rate of deafness from getting married. In those days that meant no children. Today’s eugenics enthusiasts tout embryonic testing and gene testing. Now it’s a woman and a couple’s choice. How long before that became The State’s choice? Particularly inlight of Edward’s comments?
Neither Bell nor the proponents of pre-natal testing are evil people. None would ever envisage the horrors that Eugenics turned into.
No one ever thinks about the slope before they slide down it. Which is why remembering history is _so_ important.
9:34 pm
Syn, Sorry to hear about the consternation felt by your father at his untimely demise. I’m sure genetics plays a part, perhaps a larger part than we know, but regardless, collectivism is not a suitable “solution” to me either.
Though these are anecdotal, my grandmother lived to just shy of 106, following pretty much the lifestyle of your father that you outlined. A friends grandmother, though falling considerably short of 106, still lived a long time, but drank and smoked as she wished.
For me, I do what I want, when I want, how I want and am willing to accept a premature demise for my choices, because they are my choices. That said, I’ve eaten my way through many dire warnings about this food or that, that are subsequently found to be so much hooey and reversed. So even though it feels like I might be doing bad to my body, the odds are it ain’t as bad as they want me to believe; so who knows how the cards will play out for my longevity?
Either way, I’m at peace with my decisions. If the circumstances arise, I’m far more likely to pull a “Zevon” and run out the last months/year the same way I did the rest of my life, rather than opt for operations/transplants etc. and get hooked up to machines in a sterile environment.
9:39 pm
One thing the health fascists fail to mention is that Mark’s 106 year old grandmother placed a greater strain on the health care system than an obese smoker who dies at 55.
Someone who lives into their 80’s, constantly having health issues even though he doesn’t smoke or eat bad foods is where this is headed. We will eventually ration health care based on use, not need. The less you use the system, the longer you live.
The Brits are halfway there already.
10:02 pm
Rick, a “lifetime benefits” maximum. One which no doubt the “right” people will be excluded from.
6:03 am
“We will eventually ration health care based on use, not need. The less you use the system, the longer you live.
The Brits are halfway there already.”
How would you know, foreigner?
It seems a simple equation really. You have a socialised healthcare system based on general taxation which provides a good level of health care, free at the point of need.
Over time the costs of possible healthcare exceed the acceptable revenue input (as we can cure more, costs go up and treatments get more expensive).
So the logical practice is to then ration the socialised healthcare according to criteria in addition to need. For instance, many surgeons are reluctant to do liver transplants on alcoholics. Their reasoning is that they will be providing maybe 1 year of life for the alcoholic and 5 years for the non-alcoholic. Is this nice? No. Is it fair, it is hard to see why not.
The point often forgotten is that there is not *only* the NHS in the UK, there is a thriving private sector as well. If you want to keep drinking and get your liver transplant then you’ll have to pay for it. If not then, well, tough decisions have to be made in a world of finite resources and infinite need.
The gag really is that few people are arguing for one thing or the other. You would agree (I presume) that a portion of your tax revenue should got towards basic healthcare for the poor and vulnerable. I would never countenance someone who wanted to prevent someone from paying for their own healthcare. What is being disputed is the degree to which we fund the taxpayer version against expecting people to use the private version.
In the UK we have a system that allows you to get all emergency care and most clinical care under the shared socialised model but allows you to go outside that model if you want to.
In the US you have a system that allows you to get some emergency care (in some circumstances) and some clinical care (in some circumstances) but expects to you to be using the private model if you possibly can.