Friday, December 26, 2003

Candidate Review - Health Care - Senator John Edwards

Here is John Edwards health plan, from a speech on July 28, 2003.

"First, I propose a new bargain with America's parents to make sure every child gets health insurance. If we're going to fix our broken health care system, the responsible place to start is with the greatest injustice—uninsured children.

More than a century ago, we made sure every child in America could get an education. And 60 years ago, President Harry Truman recognized a responsibility that we've not yet met. He said, "The health of American children, like their education, should be recognized as a definite public responsibility."

We can't reach that goal unless both government and parents take responsibility to put children first.

. . . I will double resources for public health clinics just like this one. I want clinics to be able to keep longer hours so they can serve working families. They need to be in convenient locations: next to schools and shopping malls so parents can use them. And I want to offer mobile clinics that come to the isolated and rural communities too often forgotten by our health care system.

Finally, I will hold insurance companies, drug companies, doctors, and lawyers responsible for keeping health care costs down. We can never meet our responsibilities to one another if the health care system isn't responsible about costs.

Something is wrong when drug companies are spending billions of dollars on advertising for their new drugs while seniors are sitting at their kitchen tables deciding what they can afford: their rent or their medication. Something is wrong when insurance companies raise premiums by 15 percent but fail to use new technologies to lower their cost—like eliminating unnecessary paperwork.
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