Les Jones

Health Care > Edwards: Universal Health Care Means Mandatory Doctor's Visits

From the AP:

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care. ADVERTISEMENT

"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "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."

Regular mammograms: Under Edwards they won't be just a good idea. They'll be the law.

SEPTEMBER 3 UPDATE

Commentors at Protein Wisdom:

Consider the implications of that as far as treatments and prescriptions go. Will the patient have the right of refusal?

All those times I bemoaned “I don’t want the Feds any further up my ass” I never thought they’d be the ones deciding I got a colonoscopy…

For the people who say "keep your government off my body" with regards to abortion (and I'm one of those people, for the most part), how do you feel about Edwards plan?

In comments at Ann Althouse some folks take the line that if there's government healthcare they do want this, because they don't want to have to pay for someone else's neglect of their own health.

I can understand the reasoning, but at the same time what are the odds that anyone will get a choice about whether they participate in the system. Hell, what are the odds the system will even come up for a popular vote? If socialized healthcare comes about, Congress will vote on it, the president will sign it into law, and from here on out you and your children will be paying for it whether you like it or not. And odds are it will be just as much of a bankrupting liability as Medicare and Medicaid.

This whole thing reminds me of that Gerald Ford quote, "If the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have."