Edwards talks about his universal health care plan to Las Vegas union workers

[JohnLocke]

Edwards takes health plan to Vegas union
By Ryan Nakashima--Associated Press
Sunday, February 18, 2007
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LAS VEGAS (AP) - Former vice presidential candidate John Edwards took his plan for universal health care to union-strong Las Vegas on Saturday, visiting the local branch of the electrical workers labor group to which his brother belongs.
Edwards told about 300 people at the local office of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers that his brother Blake, an electrician, benefited from their help.
``Thank you to IBEW and thank you for what the union has done for my brother and his family,'' Edwards said.
The Edwards campaign is hoping his ties to the labor movement will help him gain support in Nevada, which has taken on new importance in the Democratic nomination calendar since winning the No. 2 spot between Iowa and New Hampshire.
Edwards' health care plan, which he unveiled two weeks ago, requires employers to cover their workers or pay into a fund to help them. It also mandates that health care providers decrease administrative costs and switch to electronic records, and would create a market for individuals and small businesses to shop for coverage providers.
``It creates market power for people who don't have it, competition that doesn't presently exist,'' Edwards said.
Rick DeVoe, a Las Vegas insulation installer who volunteers for a local branch of Edwards' ``One Corps'' community service movement, said Edwards' health care stance is one of the reasons he supports the candidate.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, failed in her health care reforms when she was former President Clinton's first lady, DeVoe said. ``They didn't get it done,'' he said. ``Instead of taking a firm stand on what they think is right, it got so watered down and complicated that it wound up completely falling apart.''
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Read the rest here.

[Phredicles]

1. A single-payer plan would be a whole lot better;

the insurance companies need to be cut out of the equation altogether.

[focusfan]

5. I agree totally

As long as we has health insuance companies we will never have universal health care.They are profiteering just like the oil companies and the health industry as a whole.

[Clark2008]

8. Thank you.

I was going to post the exact same thing.

And, for the record, my husband works in the insurance industry and we BOTH feel this way: insurance is a racket.

[AnOhioan]

24. Single Payer is the ONLY plan I am interested in hearing

Anything else is akin to the Clinton Plan, which was crap then and crap now.

[Porcupine]

2. Employer paid health insurance kills jobs.

The US is losing jobs because we have to pay for expensive employer paid health insurance. We need to seperate the cost of hiring new staff from the tax structure in order to facilitate a robust market for labor.

Single payer health insurance would be better and cheaper all around.

[benny05]

3. Edwards Plan is a good start

Single payer is not going to be approved right away in the Congress. I think if the government can prove that they have the best plan for less money, more small businesses will support it.

[seashorelady]

22. Thus, possibly leading to single payer in the future.

Health markets offer a choice.

[seashorelady]

23. Thus, possibly leading to single payer in the future.

Health markets provide a choice.

[Vinca]

4. Edwards' plan is not universal health care, it's universal insurance.

That's why I can no longer support him.

[chimpymustgo]

7. I'll take NYT's Paul Krugman's take on the plan: "Edwards Gets It Right."

NYTimes 2/9/07

Edwards Gets It Right

By PAUL KRUGMAN

-snip-

At first glance, the Edwards health care plan looks similar to several other proposals out there, including one recently unveiled by Arnold Schwarzenegger in California. But a closer look reveals extra features in the Edwards plan that take it a lot closer to what the country really needs.

Like Mr. Schwarzenegger, Mr. Edwards sets out to cover the uninsured with a combination of regulation and financial aid. Right now, many people are uninsured because, as the Edwards press release puts it, insurance companies “game the system to cover only healthy people.” So the Edwards plan, like Schwarzenegger’s, imposes “community rating” on insurers, basically requiring them to sell insurance to everyone at the same price.

Many other people are uninsured because they simply can’t afford the cost. So the Edwards plan, again like other proposals, offers financial aid to help lower-income families buy insurance. To pay for this aid, he proposes rolling back tax cuts for households with incomes over $200,000 a year.

Finally, some people try to save money by going without coverage, so if they get sick they end up in emergency rooms at public expense. Like other plans, the Edwards plan would “require all American residents to get insurance,” and would require that all employers either provide insurance to their workers or pay a percentage of their payrolls into a government fund used to buy insurance.

But Mr. Edwards goes two steps further.

People who don’t get insurance from their employers wouldn’t have to deal individually with insurance companies: they’d purchase insurance through “Health Markets”: government-run bodies negotiating with insurance companies on the public’s behalf. People would, in effect, be buying insurance from the government, with only the business of paying medical bills — not the function of granting insurance in the first place — outsourced to private insurers.

Why is this such a good idea? As the Edwards press release points out, marketing and underwriting — the process of screening out high-risk clients — are responsible for two-thirds of insurance companies’ overhead. With insurers selling to government-run Health Markets, not directly to individuals, most of these expenses should go away, making insurance considerably cheaper.

Better still, “Health Markets,” the press release says, “will offer a choice between private insurers and a public insurance plan modeled after Medicare.” This would offer a crucial degree of competition. The public insurance plan would almost certainly be cheaper than anything the private sector offers right now — after all, Medicare has very low overhead. Private insurers would either have to match the public plan’s low premiums, or lose the competition.

And Mr. Edwards is O.K. with that. “Over time,” the press release says, “the system may evolve toward a single-payer approach if individuals and businesses prefer the public plan.”

So this is a smart, serious proposal. It addresses both the problem of the uninsured and the waste and inefficiency of our fragmented insurance system. And every candidate should be pressed to come up with something comparable.

-snip-

http://wealthyfrenchman.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html

[Clark2008]

9. And, while I respect Krugman, I have to say that I'll take

my husband's word about this over his. Krugman is an economist, but my husband works in the insurance industry and knows it a fair shake better than Krugman.

Husband says Edwards plan won't work and will only result in making the insurance companies richer while it hurts the middle class in premiums.

[1932]

15. does he explain to you exactly why he thinks that?

[Vinca]

11. IMHO, the plan is complicated and as long as insurance companies

are involved, they will find a way to screw the consumers with high co-pays, large deductibles and exclusions of service. The insurance companies have to be taken out of the mix because they are profit driven. We need a basic, government-sponsored health care system. If a person wants bells and whistles, let them call BC/BS for a supplemental policy. Basic health care, like a basic education, should be the right of all Americans. Like the Canadians, we should be able to appear at a clinic, present a card and receive treatment without worrying if we'll have to file for bankruptcy in a few months because the procedure wasn't covered. Taxes will need to be raised, but the current price quoted for health insurance for my family is so high I'd have to be taxed at 75% to equal the premium.

[area51]

12. Taxes will need to be raised

I would question whether taxes would need to be raised, unless you mean getting the wealthy & corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. If we stop over-funding the military/spook black budget, there's plenty of money for a single-payer, universal healthcare system like the civilized countries have.

[Vinca]

13. That's the best case scenario, but if you look at other countries

that provide decent health care for their citizens, their tax rates tend to be quite a bit higher than ours. We could probably do it without raising taxes if we could stop waste and corruption, but what are the chances of that happening?

[sandnsea]

16. Like other countries have

You might want to bookmark a few articles on public/private health care systems in countries like France, for starters. I don't think most people realize that not every country has a single payer only system.

[w4rma]

21. If Krugman supports it, I support it. He understands our nation's politics and economics.

After reading Krugman's column for a long time, I'll now support Krugman's take on things almost blindly at this point because he's never been wrong with his predictions. Noone has ever shown me where Krugman has ever been wrong with any of his predictions.

[NotGivingUp]

6. it's not a universal health care plan.

[citizen snips]

10. Paul Krugman supports Edwards plan

http://johnedwards.com/news/headlines/nyt20070209/

[JohnLocke]

14. Kick (nt).

[kath]

17. Band-aid approach. We need SINGLE PAYER. Health care should not be tied to

employment.

Eliminate the blood-sucking insurance companies. They suck VAST quantities of money out of the system, and provide nothing of value. Fokkin' parasites.

Time to join the rest of the "first world" nations and provide health care to ALL our people via a single payer system.

[Colobo]

18. Exactly

People need to remember that employment doesn't equal health insurance in many cases, including mine.

[eridani]

19. It's essentially the Clinton plan from 1993, with the addition of--

--a Medicare option. That makes it better than anything any of the other candidates have offered, with the exception of Kucinich, who is a straightforward advocate of single payer.

[Phredicles]

20. Question: Obama predicted there would be full coverage by 2012,

but did he say anything about what form it would take, or what form he thought it should take?

[eridani]

27. Not on his website he didn't

If he means forcing everybody to be the indentured servants of private insurance oompanies, I say it's spinach, and I say to hell with it.

[JohnLocke]

25. Kick (nt).

[Hawkowl]

26. Not good enough!

Burdening employers while enriching the insurance industry is not helpful at all. This could merely accelerate the off-shoring of jobs. We need to do what EVERY OTHER CIVILIZED country does and offer a single payer plan. It is cheapest, most efficient, and morally correct.

I expect more from Edwards than this WEAK plan.

[antigop]

28. Marie Cocco: Edwards' Flawed Health Care Plan

http://postwritersgroup.com/archives/cocc0208.html

>>
Edwards would repeat the mistake that was at the heart of Hillary Rodham Clinton's misadventure in trying to fix a health insurance system that was then, and is now, so out of whack that it manages to cover fewer and fewer Americans at higher and higher cost.

Like Clinton did, Edwards seems to believe that you can get the private insurance industry to do something it refuses to do because, in essence, doing what Edwards wants would put the industry out of business. He wants insurers to cover everyone, no matter how sick and expensive they are. He wants employers to continue to carry on their ledgers a cost that is ever more burdensome to them and to their workers, onto whose shoulders more of the health-insurance tab is being shifted.

The 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee and 2008 presidential hopeful knows that no matter how many times our health insurance crazy quilt is ripped up and stitched back together, it still will fail to cover millions of Americans.
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