John Edwards’ “Cuckoo’s Nest”
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 5:51 pm by Neal |
| Welcome to your future government health care clinic. We’re here to help. |
Are you a fan of socialized medicine, euphemistically known as “universal health care?” Well, here’s what cuckoo John Edwards has in store for you.
Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.
“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.” Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.
Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.
“The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death,” he said.
This is the ultimate, liberal fantasy: cradle to the grave government dependence. The whole idea is to control your life. Remember, Hillary Clinton’s failed health care plan would have imprisoned patients and doctors who contracted for health care services outside of her totalitarian “plan.” If the government can control a persons access to health care, it controls that person’s life. It’s that simple.
Imagine a government-controlled system of mandatory mental health care. How long before “conservatism” is classified as a “mental illness?” Or, religion?
James Taranto had this response to John Edwards:
Aside from its obvious creepiness, there is something dissonant on several levels about a liberal politician in this day and age calling for government to police everyone’s medical care.
For one thing, liberals, who these days are more or less uniformly pro-abortion, invariably speak of that practice in terms of “privacy” and “choice.” But how in the world can anyone who values privacy and choice more than life itself possibly countenance a policy of forcing women to have mammograms?
For another, we live in a time when liberals often sound like antigovernment kooks, making far-fetched claims that the government is spying on all of us, torturing innocent terrorists, deliberately letting hurricane victims die, etc. Of course the object of this paranoia isn’t government per se but the Republican Party and especially the current administration. Some have even asserted (see, for example, this 2005 item about former Enron adviser Paul Krugman) that conservative ideology precludes competent governance.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume this assertion is true. It is also true that Americans in recent decades have shown a preference for conservative ideology, electing conservative Republicans in four or five of the past seven presidential elections (and, in the other two, choosing a Democrat who proclaimed “the era of big government is over”). If only liberals can handle big government, and Americans can’t be trusted to elect liberals, expanding the government in the way Edwards proposes is a dreadful idea regardless of where you stand politically.
The question would-be Edwards supports (sic) should be asking is: Would you want George W. Bush making medical decisions for you? Is there anyone who would answer in the affirmative?
Do you want anyone making medical decisions for you besides you and your doctors? If so, well, you’re cuckoo.