What the hell is John Edwards talking about here?
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.
"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."
Seriously? I've read all the guy's health care plans and never once noticed a provision mandating doctor's visits. I've been a big fan of Edwards' willingness to toe towards the line of socialized medicine, but I wasn't expecting him to hop over into authoritarian medicine, too. So I took a look into the claim, which got Ed Morrissey very excited, as it "reveals the arrogance and the authoritarianism that waits around the corner when government-run healthcare gets imposed on a free society." Yikes! Here's what I think Edwards is referring to:
Edwards will require Health Care Markets and public plans to pro-actively monitor chronically-ill patients' health to reduce complications and hospitalizations, and he will offer private plans incentives to do the same. Vermont is demonstrating that this kind of new approach to managing chronic care can improve patients' health and save money. He will also require preventive care coverage, with public plans offering preventive care without co-payments, and provide incentives for patients to participate.
So the public plans, and those participating in the public insurance markets, will have to include provisions for health maintenance among their chronically sick members. Preventive care will be covered, and in the public plan, it will be free. Patients will have incentives to avail themselves of preventive options. But there won't be any mandate for X doctor's visits every Y years. Insofar as anyone has to do anything, the insurers will have to offer patients the option of preventive care. That's a perfectly defensible, even worthwhile, policy position. Edwards should explain it much better. And Captain Ed should keep his cool.
Update: More here.
