‘08 Watch: John Edwards On Mandatory Preventive Care
by Pamela LeaveySpeaking to an audience in Iowa on Sunday, John Edwards said 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.
I think preventive care would go a long way if it were affordable for all. With so many uninsured in America at this time and insurance companies picking and choosing who they insure, preventive care is currently not an affordable option for all and it should be.
Edwards framed his health plan with a question (and a challenge) for the other candidates saying “all presidential candidates talking about health care “ought to be asked one question: Does your plan cover every single American?”"
“Because if it doesn’t they should be made to explain what child, what woman, what man in America is not worthy of health care,” he said. “Because in my view, everybody is worth health care.”
He’s right on this “everybody is worth health care.” With the housing market tanking and more houses in foreclosure than in recent years including McMansions, the “U.S. economy “Heading For the Rocks“” and more could join the ranks of the uninsured. In fact as reported last week, more people have joined the ranks of the uninsured in recent years.
We need a fix. I hope to hear more from all of the Democratic candidates on healthcare. It’s time get to the heart of the issues that have gone to long unaddressed in America.
John Kerry advocated preventative healthcare in his campaign and many times since, including in a memorable speech on healthcare in July ‘06 when he said, “instead of telling tens of millions to wait until they are sick enough to go to an emergency room, we must and will assure high quality and preventive care for every American.”
I’m not surprised to see Edwards running with Kerry’s ball on this idea, and I honestly hope that all the Democratic candidates will do the same.
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Heh. I am having a “you bet your life” bet with my sister about mammograms. She speculates that the recent decrease in breast cancer rates as a result in the drop in mammography is not because they aren’t being diagnosed, but because the mammograms are causing the cancer. Fewer mammograms = less cancer. This is what she cites. I’m as skeptical as the next person about conventional medicine, but I’ve had mammograms every year since I was 40 and she’s never had one, so I guess we’ll find out who was right, since we have no family history of breast cancer, neither of us has had children, and we are from the same family.
As for requiring preventive health care: I would like very much to know how Edwards (and I am a supporter of his candidacy, BTW), plans to address the problem that overweight people have in receiving health care. Kate Harding at Shapely Prose had a guestblogger whose mother DIED because doctors kept telling her not to come back until they lose weight. Right now I am in the position of having to find a new gynecologist after 20 years because mine insisted that I go on some crazy crash diet on which she lost 40 pounds. After years of not giving me hassles about my weight, suddenly it’s a huge issue because she went on a diet.
There are plenty of people with BMI over 35 who are healthy, have low LDL and normal blood pressure. It is possible to be healthy at any size. But people who do not fit this norm are often, whether by saying “Don’t come back till you lose weight” or by intimidation (like me) denied medical care simply because they are fatter than someone says is OK.
It seems kind of disingenuous to REQUIRE preventive medical care when doctors are going to bar you at the door because you are overweight, or because you smoke, or any of a number of other reasons. What’s next; barring you at the door because you have a congenital illness? Heart murmur? What else?
I am deeply disturbed by Kerry’s statement that under his universal health care policy Americans would be “required” to see a doctor once a year.
I am all in favor of healthcare being made available to all U.S. citizens, regardless of their ability to pay, but “requiring” adults to visit the doctor seems to me an intrusion into an individual’s privacy and basic constitutional rights.
Has anyone read “1984″ lately?
If an adult can be “forced” to visit a doctor by the government, what comes next?
Where does this well meaning, but “big brother-ish,” tendency end?
How will Edwards enforce mandatory health checks? What if someone refuses to get, say, an immunization. Would it become permissible to force that person to receive the injection? Such coercion would be considered a criminal assault under today’s laws. But in the mind of John Edwards, and his many supporters, a violation of one’s rights is justified by the greater good. This charming “end justifies the means” philosophy encapsulates so much of the liberal world-view. No thanks!
Jill
The mammogram thing is interesting. I’ve read a bit about it. Over exposure to radiation can cause cancer, so there could be some merit in the claim. As a 50 year old woman with out health insurance, I would at this point welcome coverage for all and access to various preventative care.
I can’t help but wonder if the insurance industry has not imposed so many caveats on both the insured and the Dr’s that Dr’s are now pushing weight loss all over the place because of the rise in obesity. But yes, it is possible to be healthy at any size and it’s absurd that Dr’s would tell patients not to come back unless they lose weight, quit smoking, etc.
These days I can’t even get my Dr to prescribe a simple antibiotic for a sinus infection over the phone, although he knows I have no insurance. Why, because the threat of malpractice looms even when treating an uninsured patient.
I’ve had more than a few conversations with my Dr about the insurance industry and how restrictive it is. He is at least willing to see patients without insurance and defer billing for those with financial trouble.
Insurance compaines are turning away patients with predisposed conditions such as congenital illness and the onus may fall on the Dr’s for the barring of patients.
R. Blum
That’s Edwards’ who said that not Kerry. In my opinion, Edwards is looking at the some 45 million Americans WITHOUT health insurance and understanding how difficult it is to get them to the Dr for check up because they can’t afford it. To imply that his concept of “mandatory” preventative care or “required” yearly Dr visits would be enforced by law is a stretch and in my opinion just a bit ludicrous.
DDoublehelix
As it stands now (and has for years), parents can waive immunizations for the children on “religious” grounds.
I think you are twisting the ““end justifies the means” philosophy” — it’s the conservatives who think, after all, that it’s okay for domestic wiretapping to go on, violating our civil liberties, so that they can “stop” terror.
Illegal wiretapping is a violation of civil liberties, no doubt. You have to be out of your mind to belive that illegal wiretapping is okay, there is a legal way to make it happen after all.
Bottom line, making health checkups/screening/visits for preventative care or any other reason cannot be justified. I am still amazed that he actually played his Statist cards so early in the race.
If you people think that socialized medicine is the answer, you have not done your homework. Please stop listening to the talk shows and MSM and go do some real research. You will find that government healthcare truly sucks. We can’t even take care of the Military veterans properly. How about an entire nation??????
I wonder, why does the government have to provide health care for everyone? I can understand (and would agree with) providing health care for low income families and Military personel and other special circumsances but I see no need to have our government provide health care for me when I am perfectly capible of providing my own. to me that would simply be a way for me to get someone else to pay for me when it is not need.
Phil: Your question is based on a fundamentally false premise. The “government” is not providing health care for everyone. The commonwealth is pooling our resources to deal with a medical system that isn’t supportable in its current configuration anymore.
There is ONE truth in your existence: you WILL need medical attention at some point. (Moreso as you age.) Formerly, through all of human history, it was mostly a doctor and/or nurse who often VISITED your home. If it was bad, there was the hospital, but before WWII, pre-penicillin, infection was unmanageable and most medical care, while affordable to the individual, was primitive, at best.
Since WWII, the entire nature of medicine has changed, to the point that it is impossible for the individual to pay (in 99% of the cases) for medical care. Prior to the passage of the so-called “Bankruptcy Bill” the overwhelming majority of bankruptcy cases were filed because of MEDICAL costs.
Not credit card deadbeats. Not loan defaults. Not divorces or lost jobs: medical costs.
Two months ago, I went to the emergency room. I was in extreme pain. I was given some vicodin, a CAT scan, and told there was nothing wrong with me. (There was).
And billed $4100.
The choice is between a for-profit “insurance” system, or pooling our resources within the Commonwealth (like roads, defense, etc.) BUT we have no choice as to the pooling. That’s what the for-profit insurance system does, but in MEDICINE, the “competition” and “lower costs,” arguments of classical “free market” theory becomes a satanic joke.
The move to cut costs ends up being continual maneuvering by the HMOs to deny medical attention, and that’s been documented too many times to cite here.
The question isn’t whether or not we will pool our resources to manage risk. The question is whether it will be private (e.g. motived by the greed to make higher profits from human misery) or public.
But the “old” system doesn’t exist. High-tech medicine is expensive, and, increasingly, too expensive for the average individual.