It is no secret that the endorsements of John and Elizabeth Edwards was available to Obama at the

[Stop Cornyn]

cost of Obama adopting a decent health care plan.

I love Obama, and I'm an Obama delegate to the convention in Texas, but his health care plan is weak as dishwater. That's my judgment (which is besides the point), but -- importantly -- that's the judgment of John and Elizabeth Edwards. I have chosen to publicly support Obama despite his health care plan; certainly not because of that plan. It was a tough decision for me, and I am certain it was an issue which inspired much debate at the Edwards household just as it inspired debate at my dinner table.

Obama could have had both Edwards endorsements any time he wanted them. Obama chose not to change his policy on health care simply to gain the Edwards endorsements (which says something admirable about Obama and his integrity). In return, John and Elizabeth Edwards chose not to make an endorsement of the candidate who offers the most change and best chance for sweeping the electorate in November but who also offers a health care plan that is far inferior to Hillary's (which says something admirable about John's and Elizabeth's integrity).

Obama will win with or with the endorsement of John and Elizabeth Edwards, and the fact that neither made any endorsement before the NC primary shows that they trust the voters to make up their own minds. As it is playing out, it is now clear that this trust in the voters was well placed.

End of story.

[Araxen]

1. All their healthplans suck

They don't take the "for profit" out of the system. Till that happens we'll never see decent health care in this country.

[cali]

5. yep. and they are ALL rooted in Hacker's work

the only major difference is the mandate in Hillary's and Edwards' plans.

[Stop Cornyn]

12. Not even close.

[cali]

18. oh, please. I've read the bulk of all three.

they're all far more alike than different.

[grantcart]

24. and they are all back door approaches to universal single payer not for profit

Obama's gets us in the door first.



Because we don't have a parlimentary style democracy we can never ever take that big a step all at once. The minority in the Senate is there to stop it - and that was the intention. We have to take it piecemeal. Obama's piece is the easiest to actually get passed.

[Stop Cornyn]

25. There more alike than different. That describes Hillary, Obama, Edwards, Biden, Dodd, and Richardson

with respect to every issue. That's why they are all Democrats. It is the differences which count.

[Stop Cornyn]

7. Actually, the Edwards plan set "for profit" insurance in financial competition against a "not for

profit" Medicare-type option that would have operated much like Canada's health care plan.

If you doubt that this would have ultimately lead to the demise of the "for profit" insurance plans, you don't understand how a middle man makes his living.

If you think we could skip this transition phase and jump straight to single payer universal health care (which Edwards explicitly recognized as the ultimate goal), then you have to explain why HR 676 has never come even close to passing.

[global1]

8. Kucinich Had The Right Idea About HealthCare.......nt

[Stop Cornyn]

10. No debate from me that Kucinich's plan was by far the best, but we've tried to pass HR 676 and can't

so we are faced with the choice of continuing to beat that dead horse or seeking a method of transiting from our current mess to single payer universal care more gradually. That was the Edwards plan = not as ambitious or as good as Kucinich's excellent plan, but not a legislatively doomed as Kucinich's plan either.

[dkf]

2. Anything less than single payer is weak as dishwater.

Private health insurance is the problem, not the solution.

[WA98296]

3. EDWARDS will be on the Today show tomorrow regarding the primary

[Oregone]

4. Foolish Post: Edward's plan sucked.

Who cares about Edwards allready? Has been who wasn't.

[Stop Cornyn]

11. It was complicated; maybe you didn't understand it.

[Oregone]

35. Yeah, guess Im too simple to understand what that millionare was peddling

But then again, perhaps that there is the problem.

[DJ13]

6. Ask yourself, would gaining their endorsement be worth ........

....changing a large part of your platform in the middle of a rancorous two person race?

Can you imagine what that would have cost Obama after Hillary got through raking him over the coals about not believing in his own policies?

As much as I admired the positions Edwards took in the early primaries, he's not important enough to risk losing credibility over.

[ej510]

9. Not one of these health care plans will pass in the house because they are too expensive.

At this time we do not have the funds thanx to Bush. I believe that Obama's plan has the best chance to pass of the 3, but like i said npne of them will get though legislation. Harry reid has stated that already.

[newmajority]

15. Harry Reid is trying to sabotage the Obamadministration before he even takes office

And that's why he can't be the Majority Leader in January. Give me 10 minutes with a spreadsheet and I'll find the money for health care. Three guesses what gets cut first.

[Stop Cornyn]

17. I'm not saying Obama should have compromised just to win the Edwards endorsement, and I'm not saying

Edwards should have compromised just to boost Obama's chances.

Both Obama and the Edwards family made the choices which made perfect sense from their perspectives, and I am not critical of either choice.

[TragedyandHope]

13. I agree with Michael Moore on this..both plans are lacking

and they both are too cozy with one or another aspect of corporate interests.

[Stop Cornyn]

19. I agree. But Obama's plan lacks more.

[AllentownJake]

14. We can write all the dream scenarios we want

The fact is unless we manage to get 66 senators....whatever passes is going to be somewhat of a compromise with the Health Insurance companies and the Democrats.

[DB1]

16. A true health plan would prevent any candidate from getting elected......

You put together a comprehensive healthcare plan when you are IN power, you get elected on generalities. The pharmaceutical and insurance companies would prevent anyone with a real health plan from getting elected, because in order for it to work it will cost them, not us. Obama has it right.

[redqueen]

20. ANY of their plans will NOT be recognizable after congress gets done with this.

I am POSITIVE that the Edwardses know this, and that they also know their plans are VERY similar. (Elizabeth has even said so herself.)

[Yael]

21. The President doesn't enact Health Care legislation

What we need is the coattails so that we have a filibuster proof house and senate so that the people who write the laws can go even more progressive than we think possible.

Then, the president can sign it into law.

[DefenseLawyer]

22. I'd like to believe that Edwards was taking a principled stand

But at the point it looks a lot more like he was hedging his bets to me.

[Bread and Circus]

23. You apparently don't know a good health plan is if it bit you. Clinton, Edwards, and Obama ALL offer

inadequate plans. None of their plans, mandate or not, will fix the problem, control costs or ensure universal health care.

It's just bullshit to argue that "mandated" health insurance, which would remain largely privatized, is the end all, be all solution to the problem.

Single Payer National Health Care is a real solution.

[Adelante]

29. Yep nt

[Schema Thing]

26. Did Edwards propose Single Payer? If not, his was not better.

Obama's proposal is about as good as it gets w/o single payer... and seems to be a pretty decent path down the road to single payer.

[Occam Bandage]

27. The only major difference in their health plans was the mandate--that is to say, nothing.

[Stop Cornyn]

30. Nonsense! Where does Obama's plan non-profit health care markets or a comparable feature? Where does

Obama's plan set for-profit private insurance companies in direct financial competition against a non-for-profit government-run health care option?

How does Obama's plan simultaneously achieve the dual goal of precluding private insurers from excluding an applicant based on prior medical conditions while also precluding people from freeloading on the system by not paying premiums for health coverage while they are well and waiting until they get sick and only then jumping onto a health care plan?

Other than merely saying it hopes it will do so, what specific provisions or planned steps are there in Obama's plan to make any transition from his health insurance plan to a single-payer universal health care system?

These are the four key features of Edwards' plan. Find me where Obama's plan accomplishes any of these key goals. It doesn't.

P.S. - Don't lose sight of the fact that I'm a dedicated Obama supporter. He's right on most other issues, but his health care plan sucks. Hillary's sucks less. Edwards' is even less suckier than Hillary's. Kucinich's was so good (it didn't suck at all) that we tried and couldn't pass it through a Democratically controlled congress (or even one of the two Democratically controlled senate or house), and that really sucks.

[Occam Bandage]

32. The same place Hillary's does. That is to say, nowhere.

However, those are relatively minor concerns, especially since those were highly unlikely to actually pass Congress. Given Edwards' history, I highly doubt he was holding out for a few policy-based tinkers, but was rather hedging his bets.

[Stop Cornyn]

34. Hedging his bets? The decision not to endorse before Super Tuesday could be misinterpreted as

hedging one's bets because no one knew who was going to win.

On the eve of the vote in North Carolina, however, Obama had already won the nomination because his lead was already insurmountable so the decision to endorse or not endorse could be motivated by any number of reasons, but hedging one's bets is not one of those reasons.

[SoCalDem]

28. I like John & Elizabeth, but their particular endorsement is not a big issue to me.

ANY plan that still allows "for-profit" insurance companies into the mix, is not a great plan.

Obama surely knows that the only thing he could hope to accomplish early-on would be something similar to what he and Hillary have proposed..

John's "cancel congress' insurance until y'all have the same" was very much like the gas tax vacation..un-doable.. A president cannot just do something like that..Congress has to initiate health care.

John is not a super delegate, and is not a big fish...once Obama saw that his endorsement was not forthcoming, he moved on.

We can all argue back & forth about which plan is better and which one sucks, but the facts on health-care are still the same. We ALREADY have several government health care plans in operation now..

1. Federal employee plan
2. VA
3. Medicare
4. Medicaid (varies from state to state)
5. What's left of union jobs

Supposedly, the old people, the poor people, the military and the vast government workforce are already covered, so the only people "at risk" are the ones who currently get coverage through their jobs or are trying to cobble together coverage on their own.. Those people fall into 2 distinct groups..ones with good coverage that's affordable, and ones whose employers offer nothing, and they don't make enough to be able to afford coverage on their own.

IGMSSY comes into play...heavily (I got mine so screw you)

The five indicated groups above are unlikely to protest a lot about the non-coverage or unaffordability of coverage for the two remaining uncovered/under-covered groups.

The people with good jobs & good coverage are just thankful for their own coverage, and probably give little thought to the others who don't, so what we have is one sliver of the population of people probably making $40K or less, who are not offered coverage through work, and who cannot afford to buy it..or it's unavailable to them because of pre-existing conditions.

LIFE is a pre-existing condition, and INSURANCE is the problem...not the solution.

Until the well-paid/well-insured LOSE their coverage, or until it actually becomes ILLEGAL to offer insurance through work, nothing will get done about it..

until then we are basically saying that it's OKAY with us to force bankruptcy and insolvency upon the people in our economy who probably work the hardest.. the ones who prepare & serve our food, wash our vehicles, care for our kids, cut our hair, sell us our plastic trinkets at malls... "those" people..

Believe this.. If the upper middle classes suddenly were NOT getting health care plans at work, there WOULD be an impetus to finally change the way we deliver health care, but since the ones who are struggling the most, have no time OR money to lobby or protest a lot, they have no voice.

Few people know this, but FDR and Truman BOTH had plans for a national health care system.. so did Johnson...Medicare was a START..cover the oldest first. If it had never been intended to be a national plan, it would probably have been called Seniorcare..The seniors were the tip of the spear, but it never went beyond that..

It all comes down to money, and it's not hard to see why.. If you are an employer and you can hire people for $8 an hour with no benefits, why would you pay them $20 so they can buy their own insurance, or offer them insurance along with the $8 an hour?

When you hire something done at your house, you are only looking at the bottom line. Let's say you are having remodeling done, and two contractors are in the running..Both are licensed and have good reputations..One has union workers with insurance, and are paid $15 an hour...His bid is $25K..
The other has equally competent workers, but he only pays them $10 an hour and gives them NO benefits....his bid is 12K.. who will you hire?

We are all to blame, since we have been put into positions that demand that we always look for the cheapest..and the cheapest always means that some employees down the line are getting screwed.


Before any REAL health care can be ours for the asking, several things have to happen in a choreographed way (which is why nothing will happen...in my lifetime, anyway)

1. Employers must be PROHIBITED from offering "company plans".. and the expenses formerly counted as part of the employees benefits, passed on to the employees in the form of salary..real dollars & cents)..Employees , for decades, have been foregoing raises in lieu of ever-escalating costs of health-care...$20 wk raise, but insurance share goes up $35..or the boss "says" you're not getting a raise, BUT your health care increase is being covered by the boss.

2. Insurance companies must be taken OUT of the health care policy business altogether..

3. Hospitals must operate on a non-profit basis

4. Drug companies must operate as non-profits.

5. Proof of eligibility must be as ironclad as possible...paranoid "no damned ID" people reject this idea, but if we are all paying for the cost of coverage for all, we MUST be able to be sure that only US citizens get the care...try going to Canada to take advantage of their national healthcare (as an American)..you won't get far..

6. A national referendum spelling out what we WANT and NEED. We will have to take this out of congress' hands, because all they ever do is put a band aid here and an band aid there, and what we end up with it nothing like we asked for or needed...and a few fatcats & lobbyists get a little richer at our expense.

7. Corporate lobbying HAS to be made illegal. Do we really think that the private corporations have our public best interest at heart?

8. The whole shebang has to be rolled into ONE program MEDICARE.... no more chi-chi policies for some people..and nothing or next to nothing for the rest of us..

Starting to see why we'll never get this done?? Until PROFIT is taken out of the mix, we will never have it.

The wages for doctors, nurses, dentists, etc should be generous, but continuing to pay through the nose for huge windfalls for hospital owners/execs and the fatcats at the drug companies is what is killing us all..

See why we don't have it now?? why we probably won't ever have it??

[liberaldem4ever]

31. When the President proposes a health care plan

Congress would get to make a lot of changes to it anyway. No candidate's health care plan is going to be signed into law as it is proposed, is it? If not, any discussion of a health care plan to help the American people is for nothing if we don't all come together and make sure we have big majorities in both Houses of Congress and elect a Dem for president.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

33. The only one that offered a real solution to health care was Kucinich.

Universal single-payer health care. It's the only real solution to the current problem.

Edwards had a message which was better for poor, lower and mid income working class. However, his health care was only marginally different than that of Obama or Clinton.

In the end what we end up with will be determined by congress and will be a pittance to the American population and a boon to insurance companies.