Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Edwards: Go to Doctor Or Else

It is no secret my loathing of government run health care proposals being bandided about, but John Edwards' plan right now leads the pack in stupidity:
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.
Cradle to grave health care and the social welfare state is a European invention that is leading to their stagnating population and decline. Is this really where America wants to go?

Then there is the issue of requiring medical care. How is Edwards going to know whether someone has gone to the doctor or a woman has gotten a mammogram? Right, the doctor will have to report you for failing to go to the doctor once a year. Does anyone else see a problem with this? Oh, and by the way, it may very well be illegal under current federal law barring the sharing of personal, private medical care outside of a few cases. It is one thing for the doctor to submit a claim for payment for services rendedered and quite another to submit a report for failing to take advantage of health care.

More and more Americans are starting to see through the smoke and mirrors of universal health care and they do not like what they see.

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