In A Crowded Field, Edwards' Health Plan Sets Him Apart
By Rob Christensen--McClatchy Newspapers
Wednesday, May 9, 2007 ----
RALEIGH, N.C. - Even before his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, learned that her cancer had returned, John Edwards had made health-care reform one of his signature issues in his quest for the White House.
Edwards mailed a DVD to every active Democratic household in the critical state of Iowa in March, outlining his plan to extend health insurance to every American. He has said health-care reform would be one of the first issues he would tackle as president. And Edwards has defied conventional political wisdom, saying he would raise taxes to pay for it.
“What we have is a dysfunctional health-care system in the United States of America,” Edwards said at a recent Democratic presidential forum on health-care reform. “We need big, bold, dramatic change, not just small change.”
But what kind of plan is Edwards putting forward? Who would it help? Who would pay for it? And does it have any better chance of getting through Congress than the plan backed by the Clintons more than a decade ago?
(...)
But Edwards is the only major candidate who has laid out a specific plan for making sure that everyone is insured. (Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic presidential candidate, has proposed extending Medicare to cover everyone.)
(...)
But the political climate has rapidly changed. The insurance issue was once mainly the province of those concerned about the poor. Spiking health-care costs have become a major problem for businesses seeking to provide insurance and for employees who are paying higher premiums for skimpier benefits.
Health care ranks second to Iraq as an important problem for the government to address, according to a recent national poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a California-based nonprofit that focuses on domestic health-care issues. Respondents ranked health care ahead of terrorism and jobs.
The Edwards plan would require every American to have health insurance by 2012 - the last year of Edwards’ first term if he were elected. The plan would first make health care available to everyone and then require people to carry health insurance, just as motorists must have liability insurance.
The plan is a mix of public and private strategies. Employers would be required to either provide insurance to their employees through a company policy, or to help fund coverage for their workers by contributing to regional nonprofit government entities that Edwards calls health markets.
“Everyone in America will be required by law to be covered by this health-care plan,” Edwards said.
The health markets would use the economy of scale to negotiate affordable policies through insurers. Uninsured individuals could obtain coverage through a health market. So could employers seeking to provide group policies for their employees.
Insurance companies would be required to sell coverage at a fair price regardless of a person’s medical history or pre-existing condition; what constitutes a fair price has yet to be determined. Insurers would also be required to offer mental health benefits.
Health markets would offer traditional plans from private companies such as Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Aetna and Cigna, as well as a government-run plan similar to Medicare, the federal health-insurance program for the elderly.
The public-sector plan would resemble Canada’s single-payer system, in which insurance is publicly funded to control costs but doctors and hospitals remain private. “The idea is to determine whether Americans actually want a private insurer or whether they would rather have a government-run ... single-payer plan,” Edwards said. “We’ll find out over time where people go.” The mix of market and government initiatives makes Edwards’ plan much harder to attack than Clinton’s early 1990s plan, said Leif Wellington Haase of the Century Foundation, a liberal-leaning think tank. “In this plan, the changes happen much more gradually,” Haase said. “Each element has a market element that deflects the attack. I think it’s a very smart political document.”
(...)
Edwards is the only candidate to put a price tag on his health reforms - $90 billion to $120 billion per year - which he proposes to pay for by repealing the tax cuts pushed through by President Bush on families with a taxable income of more than $200,000 per year.
“I do not believe you can have universal health care without finding a source of revenue,” Edwards said.
Everywhere he goes on the campaign trail, Edwards talks about his health insurance plan. He notes that his wife, Elizabeth, does not have to worry about insurance or the cost of drugs.
“One of the reasons that I want to be president of the United States,” Edwards said, “is to make sure that every woman and every person in America gets the same things that we have.”
----
Read the rest
here.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
