Affordable Health Care for All

I'm going to skip a little lighter over this section . Health Care Proposals are a Democratic staple, so it should come as little surprise, even to someone who thinks that John Kerry is running only on his medals, that he has one.

Cut Your Premiums
John Kerry and John Edwards will cut family premiums by up to $1,000. That's $1,000 in real savings people can use to buy groceries, pay the bills, and save for their children's future. And that will mean more jobs and more competitive American businesses.

Certainly Mr. Kerry is right that reducing premiums would pump money into peoples pockets, but he doesn't explain (here) how he intends to do this. For that you need to look into the details of the plan.

Cover All Americans With Quality Care
The Kerry-Edwards plan will give every American access to the range of high-quality, affordable plans available to members of Congress and extend coverage to 95 percent of Americans, including every American child. Their plan will also fight to erase the health disparities that persist along racial and economic lines, ensure that people with HIV and AIDS have the care they need, end discrimination against Americans with disabilities and mental illnesses, and ensure equal treatment for mental illness in our health system.

This is a veritable banquet of programs, some of them quite sensible. But the question remains; will American's accept the idea that all Americans should have access to health care? Many would argue that those who do not have coverage, don't have it because they have failed to plan for their futures and so don't' deserve it.

Cut the Cost of Prescription Drugs
The Kerry-Edwards plan will reduce prescription drug prices by allowing the re-importation of safe prescription drugs from Canada, overhauling the Medicare drug plan, ensuring low-cost drugs, and ending artificial barriers to generic drug competition.

I do think drug companies have the potential to be as demonized as, say, French people, and certainly this provision socks it to them. Even some conservatives I know complain about the enormous profits taken by the drug companies. But the other side to this is that they have to fund research. So what is the proper balance between greedily gouging themselves at the expense of Americans Health and their justifiable need to make a profit after investing so much in research and development? It's a tricky question.

Cut Waste And Inefficiency
Today, approximately 25 percent of health care costs are wasted on paperwork and administrative processing. The Kerry-Edwards plan harnesses American ingenuity to cut waste, save billions, and take new steps to ensure patient privacy.

Now this is more like it. One of my favorite arguments against "socialized" medicine is "Well if you have socialized medicine you'll have a bunch of bureaucratic red tape and forms to fill out." I always wonder if the person making that argument has actually been to a doctor recently. We already got enormous amounts of paperwork and red tape.

More than the other sections we've covered, understanding the details of the Kerry-Edwards health plan requires a more in-depth reading.