Socialism or Fascism?
John Edwards' universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care."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."
Sieg Heil!
posted by scalpel at 12:58 PM
18 Comments:
Sounds like you are moving down the same route as the worst of the British National Health System.
It will be nice to see what the government says will be REQUIRED preventive care for whom because that's the government's job, not the doctor's. I'm sure John Edwards will be best able to determine at what point EVERY WOMAN regardless of risk factors should be checked with a mammogram routinely. Age 30? 50? 60?
If the government is threatening to kick you off the program for not getting your routine exam(s) for whatever reason (hell, maybe you're 35 and don't want your boobs squished), feel free to go to the ER for a free last-minute check to get your forms signed.
Would this also require that the person get treatment too? If your blood pressure is 148/92 for 3 visits in a row, will you be REQUIRED to take a blood pressure pill to lower it to 120 or else risk termination from the program?
If you live in the Ozarks or most other rural places where there aren't places doing stress tests and mammograms, will the government pay for your ride to the Big City to get one? What about your hotel costs? Hell, throw in some food while you're at it.
And it seems that we would have to have required mental health checkups too, since he wants to cover mental illness in his proposal. Even the Soviets and the Nazis never tried to go that far.
Good Lord! That sounds a bit unreasonable.
That's... creepy.
I cringed when I read Edward’s statement on the Internet. Sheesh! It’s enough to make me vote for a Republican. Well, almost:-)
I mean, I'm hippie dippie and a bleedin' heart liberal and all, but has Edwards really thought about how much compulsory medical care would cost? I don't think we can afford it. I don't think we have the equipment in place to even handle that kind of demand.
Let's start small and work our way up. Whatever the reform, it has to be sustainable.
M
Well, agreed the part about including mental ilness is totally unreasonable, and how the governements implements this is something else altogether, but otherwise it makes total sense, at least to the degree that there should be a requirement to do checkups (I know that there are insurances who have that kinda thing too). What the consequence should be if you don't get a checkup for decades and then just kinda miss that growing cancer, is also another story.
It's scary. I already lay blame for the anti-VBAC climate in no small part on John Edwards (who, after all, made much of his fortune suing doctors for not performing c-sections). I can just imagine what he'd do with prenatal care. The days of declining screening tests (and I turn down almost every one of them) would be gone.
What's kind of amazing to me, though, is how many folks who are big into alternative medicine support this twit. He fairly obviously wants to suck any level of choice out of medicine. (Whatever I think of naturopathy & such, I do think people should have the choice.) It's like they only listen to the stupid "two Americas" rhetoric and totally ignore actual policy speeches.
I just don't see how that can be enforced.
I get the preventative medicine thing but things happen in life to keep one busy, time gets by and then you don't get to the appt in the specified time? What? You loose benefits or penalized in some way?
Glad he is trying to address it but just don't agree with that.
next...
Scalpel:
Personally, I can't stand Edwards. That stated to turn him into a caricature of Adolf Hitler is in really poor taste. I don't think you would find the same treatment of a W picture funny would you. Keep it above the belt line.
Anonymous liberals only like Hitler comparisons when they are applied inappropriately to conservatives. I think Edwards has earned the comparison. His campaign is based on the same principles as National Socialism.
Sig Heil, indeed!
Nobody would have gotten it if I'd tried to make him look like Mussolini.
You mean that isn't Mussolini?
Coming from someone who made sh*t-tons of money from medmal, Edwards needs to tone down the "I have the solution to the heathcare crisis." I'm an unapologetic lefty (and saying that in 'enemy territory' hehe), but he's gone off the deep end as of late on this one. I can give him some leeway on being a bit hypersensitive given the family/wife situation, but the tail doesn't wag the dog.
Actually, I'm tired of just about EVERY politician--left,right,red,blue--overstepping their intellectual bounds and just floating sound bites to see what "catches" with polls. Unfortunately, until the herd thins on both sides, that's what we're going to get.
Then the real mudslinging begins. :/
Hell, I'm a liberal and I think this is a horrible idea. Just where is the capacity? radiologists flee from mamms, remember?
Nobody likes doing paps except Gyns, and lord knows there's not enough of us!
Not well-thought through.
this guy is a prize moron. besides the fact that 'routine physicals' have been shown to be virtually worthless edwards is a sissy.
Please, please, please don't let this guy win the Democratic primary. Or I may be forced to *cringe* vote Republican.
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