that way until we get Federal financed elections for all offices.
Edwards plan is not bad - it is just not what we should have. At the moment His has the best chance of passing and does the most - might even help sneak single payer universal health in - by the back door - in 10 or 15 years. Here is a nice truthful summary/commentary on the Edwards Universal Health Plan.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070205&s=cohn020607How populist is John Edwards's new health care plan?
The Reformer
by Jonathan Cohn
Only at TNR Online | Post date 02.06.07
<snip>
I'm willing to believe Edwards has actually undergone such a mental transformation. Talking to people who struggle to find affordable medical care really does make you impatient for reform. But the more important question is over substance, not motive: Does the Edwards plan actually live up to the candidate's newly raised ambitions?
Mostly. The scheme he formally unveiled yesterday is far more sweeping than the one he trotted out four years ago, starting with the fact that it would actually bring insurance to every American. And it seems even more grandiose if you focus on the details, which open the door to a far more comprehensive makeover of American health care than the mainstream analysis in the press suggests. All of this is good--very good, in fact.
Still, there's a caveat. The new Edwards plan is not as far-reaching as some plans now circulating in Congress including plans that call for remaking the health care system top-to-bottom by creating a single-payer system modeled on Medicare. Precisely because the Edwards plan comes from the candidate positioning himself as the voice of working-class populism, that makes the final product just a tad disappointing.
Edwards's method of achieving universal coverage is to establish what wonks call an "individual mandate"--a model for reform that has recently become trendy among health care economists on the center-left. (Yes, I just used the words "trendy" and "economists" in the same sentence.) Since getting a big push from the Washington-based New America Foundation a few years ago, individual mandate schemes have found advocates in former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (who passed such a plan for his state) and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (who has proposed such a plan for his).
Not surprisingly, there are many parallels between those two and what Edwards has offered this week. As in those other schemes, under the Edwards plan, people would be required to buy insurance. If they can get it through their employers, great--then they can keep getting coverage that way. But, for those who can't, Edwards would offer an alternative place to buy insurance--something he calls a "Health Market." It's a new name for what's really an old, but important idea: coming up with some way to let people buying insurance on their own get the same low rates that people with employer-sponsored, group insurance get. Insurers who wish to sell coverage through these Health Markets would have to abide by certain standards: They'd have to offer the same minimum benefits as the local Blue Cross-Blue Shield plan, and they couldn't discriminate based upon preexisting medical condition.
Like Romney and Schwarzenegger, Edwards has also preached the need for shared responsibility: Just as he would demand that individuals get insurance for themselves, paying what they can for it, he'd demand that employers pay part of the cost--either by offering workers coverage directly or contributing into a pool of money. That pool of money would, in turn, help finance tax credits so that even the working poor could afford to buy coverage through the Health Markets. Since, even with tax credits, some people couldn't afford private insurance, Edwards would then expand eligibility for existing government programs that serve the poor: Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). <snip>
In some ways, suggesting that worthwhile government spending should take priority over deficit-reduction is even more controversial than proposing to raise taxes. But that's not the plan's most intriguing--and potentially radical--feature. That distinction would belong to a tiny provision tucked within the Health Market proposal--one that only true aficionados would notice. The provision is for what's known as a Medicare buy-in. When people go to buy insurance through the Health Markets, they'll have the option to buy into a public program modeled on Medicare. This would, in theory, set up a competition between the public and private insurance plans. And, if the public program ends up winning in the long run--by attracting most or all of the subscribers--then eventually you'd have what is basically a single-payer system, in which the government provides insurance directly to most people through something like Medicare. <snip>
Had Edwards chosen to endorse a real single-payer plan--something he says he considered seriously--the television explanation would have probably been easier. (As its proponents like to say, you can defend it with three words: "Medicare for all.") More important, though, had Edwards endorsed true single-payer he would have stretched the limits of debate even further than he already did. <snip>
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