Last week, John Edwards put forward his healthcare plan which got pretty positive reviews - not an all-out single-payer system, but a good step in the right direction, pitting private and state providers in direct competition with each other (and since state can provide better care more efficiently for less money than any business, in the long run it should become popular enough to displace private health insurance from all but the richest people's plans) which should reduce the cost of healthcare over time.
Unfortunately, the Right-wing attack on bloggers on the matter of science and medicine (not to mention the angry astronaut, Libby trial, Obama announcement, and the death of a Playboy playmate) reduced the amount of space given to the plan in the media.
I hope there will be more coverage of this week's proposal. A few minutes ago, Edwards posted his comprehensive proposal to enact his plan to end the war in Iraq:
* Cap funding for the troops in Iraq at 100,000 troops to stop the surge and implement an immediate drawdown of 40-50,000 combat troops. Any troops beyond that level should be redeployed immediately.
* Prohibit funding to deploy any new troops to Iraq that do not meet real readiness standards and that have not been properly trained and equipped, so American tax dollars are used to train and equip our troops, instead of escalating the war.
* Make it clear that President Bush is conducting this war without authorization. The 2002 authorization did not give President Bush the power to use U.S. troops to police a civil war. President Bush exceeded his authority long ago, and now needs to end the war and ask Congress for new authority to manage the withdrawal of the U.S. military presence and to help Iraq achieve stability.
* Require a complete withdrawal of combat troops in Iraq in the next 12-18 months without leaving behind any permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.
Discuss...
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This is great news! A trial lawyer is for CAPS! Cap the troops at 100,000, then cap pain and suffering awards at 250,000-500,000 dollars (in medical malpractice), so that we can restore some sense to jury awards and bring down the OB-Gyns' annual $150,000+ insurance premiums. maybe i'd vote for him then, but until then he's just uninspiring and bereft of vision. this "plan" sounds more like an accountant tinkering with numbers. why not just implement the vision of the Iraq study group, hold an historic summit of all the mid east players, something big and bold. i'll read his health plan and honestly let you know what i think. health care is even more of a quagmire for the average american, and for a man who made his millions profiting off quackery and pseudoscience and histrionics to convince jurors that doctors were at fault for cerebral palsy cases, i can never take the man seriously, nor can any other doctor. i know you like him, and many others do too, but i don't get it.
"and since state can provide better care more efficiently for less money than any business".
I was looking for the sarcasm tags but after reading the rest of the post you appear to be serious. There aren't many things the state can provide for less than businesses because almost every decision gets bogged down in pork-barrel politics. Just look at any newspaper and there are dozens of articles on government mis-management. In this weeks news in California one branch of the government just doubled the salaries of prison workers to "deal with overcrowding". Now state mental hospitals are losing all of their psych workers to the prisons. Large corporations certainly have their share of mis-management but they don't hold a candle to the government.
Both,
Unfortunately, the VA and Medicare both prove the point that single-payer health care is a better deal, and a better plan than private insurance.
Short of that, offering a plan that allows private citizens to buy INTO Medicare is the next best thing. We will have to increase the medicare payments to doctors though.
If Edwards wants a crippled medical-care system and a general regional religious war in the Mideast, why then he's got two great plans there. If not ... then not.
Regarding the first: Twenty-five years ago, an HMO in southwest Ohio attempted to create a "one fee pays for all services" private health care system for senior citizens. Within a couple of years the one-fee program had overrun its budget so badly that it dragged its parent company, which had been nicely profitable, close to bankruptcy. The parent company was ChoiceCare; the "one fee pays for all" program was called ChoiceMediCare. Since then, I've seen no reason to think that any similar program would be able to avoid a similar fate, whether it's run by a business or a government. Health-care programs already account for something like thirty percent of the federal budget, and large chunks of state budgets, and those programs are all hopelessly inadequate and incompetent. Why does anyone think that having the state run even more of the health-care system will improve matters any?
Regarding the second: it's well known that both Sunni and Shia insurgents are attacking the Coalition troops in Iraq. What isn't well known is that they're attacking each other much more frequently and savagely. Events in Iraq have made it clear that for at least the last century, Shia and Sunni have existed in an uneasy truce that was kept only because those in power were not interested in sectarian war. Remove the US troops, and Iraq will probably descend into a sectarian civil war, a massacre of the Sunni population, and a theocratic Shi'ite-run government that is allied with the aggressive theocratic government of Iran. A Shi'ite theocracy that controls both the Iranian and Iraqi oilfields and has nuclear weapons would dominate the entire region, meaning it would dominate one-third of the world's energy supply. It's such a threat that other regimes in the region might well go to war -- undeclared war, terrorist war, but still war -- to prevent it.
The recent fall in the price of oil was due to Saudi boosts in production. A number of analysts whom I read regularly seem fairly sure that the Saudis boosted their production specifically to get the price of oil down, because low oil prices hurt Iran and its expansionist programs far more than they hurt Saudi Arabia. There have also been reports that Saudi Arabia is sending help to the Sunni insurgents inside Iraq -- insurgents who are spending most of their time and energy killing Shi'ites. The conclusion seems obvious.
Healthcare explained.
This post asked for discussion of the Iraq proposal, so let's try to stick to the topic here, OK?
Whatever do you mean? Got any of those charts prepared by the US Chamber of Commerce?
I'd really like to see some of this trend data.
WTF? A civil war that we started is entirely within the mandate. It's how we do business; look around on this and get back to me.
I like Edwards and all, but that paragraph is just asinine. It reads like, "I voted to authorize this conflict, and I voted to authorize Kosovo, but I'm having second thoughts on this now because it's not working out so swimmingly and making me look particularly stupid and prone to kneejerk reactions when it was my job to be a separate branch of the government.
Can I have a do-over?