So how's he going to pay for the police to arrest the people who don't go to the doctor?
I certainly don't know all the details of his plan, but I assume the check-ups would be something you would agree to if you want the coverage. I'm sure it's not as invasive as you want it to sound. But then again, I though many of you were okay with giving up your privacy.
BTW, do you folks object to having to have your car inspected? Or is that too big-brother for you?
Anything that the federal government requires is invasive. Everything.
The coverage would be required. And the check-ups.
And yeah, I do object to having my car inspected.
It makes absolutely no difference safety wise and it's time & $15 wasted yearly.
>>I assume the check-ups would be something you would agree to if you want the coverage.>>
So then you're also assuming that there would be an option _not_ to have the coverage? Wouldn't that mean that there would still be people - even their children! - uncovered by insurance? Or would you also make it a law that parents _have_ to have the prescribed annual care for their children or have the children removed from their custody?
Betsy objects And he's going to pay for all of this wonderful birth-to-death health care by ending Bush's tax cuts to people earning over $200,000 a year. Sure, that will be more than enough to cover this plan.
Why do you think that sum will not be adequate? What figures are you looking at? You DO have some figures before making the criticism, I hope.
As I stated, I don't know everything about the plan. Interesting that folks here scoff at the idea of Bush abusing powers to tap phone calls and read e-mails, then speculate that Edwards wants to have girls dragged in for forced pap smears. Amazing how quickly you'll give up your rights (and the rights of others)to a faux-conservative like Bush, and then scream when you think a dem might impose on you.
Ray,
Are you against having passports to travel to and from the US? Or should we just have open borders?
Wonder what the "mental health" exam would consist of.
A few years ago a state trooper cadet in Delaware was denied a post because the state shrink who examined cadets before commissioning said the man was not rational enough.
Turned out the man was just a Baptist. Believed in the inerrancy of scripture, resurrection of Christ, the Second Coming, creation, you know, the Bible. Trooper cadet took the state to court on this.
Hotair had a link to an article today on which medical speciality has the most non-believers.
Guess which speciality?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/
rele...70903094243.htm
>>...then speculate that Edwards wants to have girls dragged in for forced pap smears.>>
WHAT????? _Who_ said that?????
Whatever happened to "keep your laws off my body" mark? Or are you willing to forego that?
And if you have to go for checkups, do you have any choice whatsoever in the treatment you get? Or does the government leave you no choice?
It's not just about privacy (another attempt at distraction by mark -- Look! Look! A unicorn!!), but about control of one's body. (See: abortion, Right to)
Yes, Suek, it was hyperbole, in response to MarkD saying that the police would arrest people for not going to see a doctor.
Once again, you folks get your panties in a wad speculating. Despite what Ray claims, I don't think anyone here knows the details of his plan. Probably Edwards himself hasn't fleshed out the plans.
FWIW, here is my opinion: No one should be forced to accept govt. healthcare, but if it were offered, and a stipulation was that you had to get regular check-ups, that would be fine.
Again, you folks accept this:
The government says that in order to save lives, it must have access to your phone calls and e-mails.
Yet you reject this:
The government says that in order to save lives and money, you must have preventative check-ups if you are to be part of a universal health care plan.
There are pluses and minuses to both statements. If one is more absurd than the other, my vote is with the first one.
Mark:
...FWIW, here is my opinion....
Its worth absolutely nothing.
If Edwards hasn't fleshed out his "plan", it is not a plan. It is BS just like everything else he says.
Chuck
Have ANY of the people defending Edwards read this article?
It's mandatory. Quote: "'It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,' he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs." That's not voluntary. You don't get a choice.
You do understand what "mandatory" means, correct?
As for the cost, he's claiming $120 billion. Per year. There are about 3 million tax returns filed with Gross Incomes over $200,000. That's $40,000 of extra tax per return. And that assumes that it comes in on budget. Are you willing to eucre, by force if necessary, an extra $40,000 per taxpayer from a group that already pays over a third of the tax bill?
Orthodoc,
Nobody on this thread has defended his plan. I have pointed out the hypocrisy of whining about invasion of privacy after defending the invasion of privacy by Bush. You can make a case for wire-tapping, but you can't say it's not an invasion of privacy.
As for his plan, linked below, there is no mention of forced check-ups for every man, woman and child in the U.S. I acknowledge that I could be wrong, but I believe any mandatory check-ups would be for those who rely on the govt. to pay the bills, not when it is the company or the individual who is footing the bill. I believe if you take any support from the govt. - welfare, food stamps,etc. - they have the right to set the conditions.
And Chuck, maybe you're right. If Bush had even come close to having thought out his plans, his presidency wouldn't be such a disaster.
http://johnedwards.com/issues/he...are-fact-sheet/
I think mark's repeated references to "wiretapping our phones" is sufficiently hyperbolic to indicate where he's coming from.
And his facile criticism of a supposed "double standard" without defending Edwards' Big Government Mandate (fleshed or not, Edwards' statement is devoid of ambiguity) just illuminates his fatuousness more.
There is no detail of a plan required. That the man could make the statement he did and think that was a GOOD idea -- mandatory coverage, mandatory check-ups is just stunning.
What I know is what Edwards said:
"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care"
His words, not mine.
Sounds like the Silky Pony has fleshed out his plan to me.
And I don't know where the passport remark came from, but I don't have a problem with passports.
And I'd close the borders AND deport all illegal aliens.
Consider this an "extended" comment...
http://www.captainsquartersblog....ives/
012456.php
Mandatory Mental care? We should start with John Edwards, as he seems to have delusions of grandeur believing he will be the next President after having served a single unremarkable term in the Senate. We the people will decide which psychiatrists will conduct the examination; as a populist, he would of course want to be treated the same as any other citizen.
It is obvious that our health care system needs major changes. Any thoughtful plan should be given thoughtful consideration, not the knee-jerk reactions above. Nowhere on Edward's website does it talk about arresting people who don't get check-ups. In fact, it doesn't say people have to do so. Strange that people who generally ridicule the msm are now citing a Yahoo story to whip up fear.
John Edwards made his fortune as a tort lawyer winning judgements in medical malpractice suits, and to win he trotted out the usual medical "experts" who testify to supplement their income, often on different sides in different cases. How does the ability to sway a voir dired jury qualify one to be President of the USA, and an expert on "universal" health care?
Foolish me. I thought mandatory meant mandatory and would be enforced by the power of the state.
Maybe he meant voluntary, like the Income Tax.
Citing a YAHOO STORY? Now you're scrambling.
He is being QUOTED VERBATIM at a public gathering (before the msm have an opportunity to "interpret" his nuances).
Why do the regressives here think that Americans don't deserve national health coverage?
Every other first world country has had that for years. Americans deserve universal access to medicare too.
Argus,
Of course you just spout your LLL slogans without research.
In case you have not noticed most of those "first world countries" are already dismantling their nationalized health care schemes. Anyone and everyone who has the money BUYS supplemental AMERICAN style insurance so they can get AMERICAN style health care. Many of them come to the US and pay cash for tests and operations that they would have to wait years for in their "First world countries" with your holy nationalized health care. I know, my ex's brother went to Houston from London and paid cash for a heart operation that he would have died before getting from Britain's NHS. The hospital he went to has so many European and Canadian patients that their newsstand carries all the major Euro and Canadian papers along with US ones.
And in more and more of your "first world countries" nationalized health care is being used as a tool to control the population. It has gotten to the point where the Brits are about to ditch the system for just that reason after stories such as these...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...26/
nbaby126.xml
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
pages...in_page_id=1770
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...ge_id=1799&
ct=5
BTW-want to know how long you will have to wait for treatment/tests/surgery in Ontario? Well, the province has provided you with a handy little tool to find out. http://www.health.gov.on.ca/
tran...public_mn.html#
No wonder those who can afford to are crossing the border in droves. I guess the wish to live overrides the desire to be all so smug about having holy nationalized health care.
And you might wish to read this nice article about the wonders of the Canadian system, too. http://www.americanthinker.com/
b...ealth_care.html
Now I know idiots like you will say that those are cherry picked instances yaddayaddayadda. But they aren't. I could have posted at least 100 more stories such as these from your "first world countries" with holy nationalized health care that no one in the US would tolerate. From filthy hospitals making patients sicker and causing them to die, people dying while waiting for care, people being denied treatment because they will not "put back into the system what it will cost to treat them", being denied access to life saving drugs that are routinely used in the US because their "first world country" government thinks they cost too much.
Argus (boy, what would his eye care cost in taxpayer $?) thinks Americans "deserve national health coverage"? Why does he hate Americans so? Or, perhaps, like most self-styled 'Progressives' he just hates liberty and freedom of choice more.
I still await a response from our pet Lefties as to why they don't want to keeps Edwards' laws off our bodies. Perhaps they're willing to give up Roe in return for Stalinist style health care?
In case you have not noticed most of those "first world countries" are already dismantling their nationalized health care schemes.
Such as ... ?
Jorg claims "I still await a response from our pet Lefties as to why they don't want to keeps Edwards' laws off our bodies."
Why don't you stop inventing nonsense and then putting it in the mouths of "Lefties". Anybody would think your name was Betsy, the amount you do that.
Obviously, Edwards was talking in general about the need to improve preventative medical care, and you're talking it up into stories about police arresting people who don't get their eyes checked. Obviously no one can force anyone to get medical care, and you make yourselves look (even more) ridiculous by exaggerating one aspect of a national health care plan.
I haven't seen any credible national health plans from any republicans. Why don't you believe that Americans deserve national health coverage?
>> Why don't you believe that Americans deserve national health coverage?>>
That's silly. They deserve the best they can afford.
Suek thinks Americans deserve the "best health care they can afford".
I agree. And as a nation, we can help with the affordability by pooling citizens at the national level, and removing the excess profits of insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
And if that doesn't work then we can nationalize the whole mess and turn it over to Harvard and Yale graduates in Public Administration. They're smarter and have better motives then those grubby holders of mere MBAs
Mark:
Though it is not perfect, there is no systemic flaw in America's healthcare that might warrant "major" changes--especially in comparison to systems elsewhere. The most urgently needed fix would actually be relatively simple: eliminate the tax break for employer-sponsored healthcare (reducing income taxes commensurately for tax neutrality). That would force more competition among insurance companies, and have a better chance of reaching the uninsured. By contrast, Mr. Edwards' $120 billion cost estimate is a joke: in 2004, states spent $5,313 annually on healthcare per covered individual; applying that to all of America would cost about $1.594 trillion.
Mark:
By the way, the Administration's terrorist wiretapping program was both necessary and not an invasion of any protected privacy right--rationale starts here and continues.
>>...and removing the excess profits of insurance and pharmaceutical companies.>>
Heck, I'd settle for just removing the excess profits of malpractice lawyers...
What "excess profits" are those, Sue?
Try to keep up.
Betsy
I noticed that you took me to task elsewhere about being a socialist.
You made is sound like we know each other, but I have no idea who you are, we've never debated anything.
I'm happy to debate you, but for heavens sake--if you aren't scared--why not have the courage to let me know about this.
Betsy
I think I erred and it's Skip at Granite Grok who thinks we're haveing a one sided debate.
Sorry to accuse you incorrectly. His comments link to your blog.
Again--oops I apologize
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