Column of the Day: IBDeditorials.com on ‘EdwardsCare’ (Also: ‘BooHooCare’)

IBDeditorials.com, whose daily e-mail should be a must-receive, got to the essence of “EdwardsCare” in a Thursday editorial:

A Comrade’s Medical Plan

Health Care: Don’t want to be part of John Edwards’ universal system? Too bad. As he told a group of reporters Monday, under the Edwards regime, “You don’t get that choice.”

Got that? In John Edwards’ America, the people will be forced to be a part of the collective. There’s no way out.

Walk into the library and check out a book, you’ll get “signed up” for socialist health care. Pay taxes, get signed up. Send the kids to school, get signed up.

“Basically every time they come into contact with either the health care system or the government,” Edwards said, “. . . they will be signed up.”

The former senator has modified his position somewhat. While campaigning in Iowa over the summer, the mandate only went as far as to require Americans to seek preventive care.

“If you’re going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years,” he said. “You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”

His “if” indicated that on some level, choice was still possible. But Monday’s statement cleanly stripped away all pretense.

It seems clear to us that the penalty for not “joining” the system — for failing to obey our keepers — would be imprisonment. But, hey, prisons are government institutions, so they’ll probably sign you up there, too.

….. Destroying private medicine in this country is not the way we’re going to save health care. The best path is to enact public policy that increases competition.

History shows that has worked in every other sector. There’s no reason it can’t work in health care.

Read the whole thing.

I’ve already noted how HillaryCare II is coercive at its core.

Though vague on many levels, the “Plan for a Healthy America” (hereafter referred to as “BooHooCare”; click on “Plan Details” for the PDF at this link) touted by BOOHOO (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama) appears to have no shortage of coercion, including the following (bolds inside quotes are mine):

• (Pages 4-5) “Employers that do not offer meaningful coverage or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employee will be required to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of the national plan.” Really? McDonald’s? Amusement parks? Get ready for a cost explosion, and entry-level jobs being tougher to find.
• (Page 5) “Obama will expand the number of options for young adults to get coverage by allowing young people up to age 25 to continue coverage through their parents’ plans.” This is a forced coverage mandate on companies covering the parents. It appears not to matter whether the young adults still live at home.
• (Page 7) “Obama will require that plans that participate in the new public plan, Medicare or the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) utilize proven disease management programs.” Proven, schmoven. This is a sop to the “wellness community,” which, though well-intentioned, has all too often vastly oversold its “proof,” and would, under BooHooCare, force its programs onto employers and insurance companies whether they want it or not.
• (Page 8) “He will also challenge the medical system to eliminate inequities in health care by requiring hospitals and health plans to collect, analyze and report health care quality for disparity populations and holding them accountable for any differences found.” This is the banking industry’s Community Reinvestment Act applied to health care, and looks to be an administrative nightmare. Elsewhere, BooHooCare claims that it is going to lower admin costs. Not with requirements like this.

I would not be surprised if the percentage “contribution” in the first bullet above would end up being in double digits. And of course the doublespeak of “contributions” is carried in from the Social Security system, which constantly abuses and misuses the word. Try not “contributing” to BooHooCare, and see how optional it is.