Edwards: Beware rivals' painless health plans

[JohnLocke]

Edwards: Beware rivals' painless health plans
By Tony Leys--Des Moines Register
Saturday, March 10, 2007
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Newton, Ia.--Iowans should be skeptical of presidential candidates who promise painless solutions to the nation’s health-care problems, former U.S. Sen. John Edwards said here today.

“You ask them how much it costs, if they don’t tell you,” he said. “And you ask them how they’re going to pay for it.”

Edwards, a North Carolina lawyer who was the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate in 2004, spoke to more than 250 people crowded into a union hall. He focused on his health-care proposal, which would try to cover everyone.

“My plan costs $90 billion to $120 billion per year, and I’ve got a way of paying for it,” he said. Then he delivered the line that brought the most raucous applause of the day:

“The way we pay for it is by rolling back Bush’s tax cuts for the richest people in the country.”

Edwards said the nation faces a moral responsibility to help the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance. But he said the problem goes beyond the uninsured.

“We’ve got a lot of people who even if they have health-care coverage, they’re scared to death they’re going to lose it,” he said.

Edwards would require employers to offer health insurance or pay into a fund to help people buy it.

He would offer subsidies to people who couldn’t afford insurance, and he would allow consumers to choose private plans or government-run plans.

He also said he would try to control health-care costs by requiring use of electronic records and by stressing preventive care.

Edwards has campaigned hard in Iowa, visiting the state more since the November 2004 election than any of his Democratic rivals.

Today’s audience seemed primed for a change from President Bush. They ranged from white-haired retirees to a 9-month-old boy whose T-shirt proclaimed: “I’m already smarter than the president.”
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Read the rest here.

[BeyondGeography]

1. Love that t-shirt

:rofl:

Good politics by Edwards, as well.