Trial Lawyer And Medicine Man

Socialism: The health care plan that John Edwards has put forth would force Americans to visit their family doctors even when they're well and also cover mental health and dental costs. The more details that leak out, the uglier it gets.

To achieve universal coverage, the former senator would require every one of us to have health insurance. Never mind that it would be easier to herd a bunch of wildcats into a potato sack.

Whatever happened to choice? Some Americans simply prefer not to buy health coverage.

As we noted last week, 38% of the estimated 47 million people who lack health insurance have incomes higher than $50,000 a year. A staggering 20% of all uninsured have incomes over $75,000.

These are people who can afford coverage but, for whatever reason, don't want it. Why does Edwards presume that he can take away their freedom to choose?

The fact that some Americans who can afford coverage opt out is confirmed by Edwards himself. "If you don't mandate it," he told the San Jose Mercury News, "then you can have as many as 10 and 20 million Americans who don't have health care coverage."

Unfortunately, there are other details of Edwards' plan that are cause for alarm.

Forced physician visits, for example. Once enrolled in an insurance plan, Americans would then be required to submit themselves to their doctors for preventive care.

"If you're going to be in the system," Edwards said last Sunday while campaigning in Iowa, "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."

To whom will those found not to be OK, or who don't want the treatment that's being forced on them, be referred? Dr. Kevorkian?

Or will they just be kicked out of "the system"? If so, then universal health care is not universal but contingent upon behaving in a way prescribed by some central planner.

We thought this was about health care, about improving the system we have, not about government bosses running our lives.

Great Britain is already considering a move in this direction. The conservatives want to deny care to those who live unhealthy lifestyles and won't cooperate with the health care professionals.

Edwards' plan also imposes price controls on the private sector. Private insurers, he said, "charge anywhere from 30 to 40 cents on each dollar for profit and overhead." In his system, "We'd cap that amount at 15%."

If it sounds like Edwards has animosity toward the insurance industry, remember that this is the fellow who made his fortune suing doctors, hospitals and insurance companies in malpractice cases.

Edwards' plan also would place demands on private businesses beyond their moral duty. It would require employers to either cover their workers or to pay into a fund that would be used to buy insurance.

And if they can't afford it? Then there's the plan's cradle-to-grave entitlement. "The whole idea," Edwards says, "is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death." What will the government provide next? The continuum of food? Housing? Happiness?

All this -- body, mind, teeth -- for a cost that Edwards reckons at $120 billion a year. But only the self-deluded could believe that.

Consider that the last program Washington set up to help us with our health care -- the 2003 prescription drug benefit -- was to cost only $400 billion for the first 10 years. But only two weeks after the legislation was signed, the projected costs rose to $570 billion.

Now the Health and Human Services Department estimates that benefit payments through the program will be $933 billion -- for eight years instead of 10.

Going back a bit further we run into the Medicaid debacle. From 1970 to 2004, Medicaid spending rocketed from $5 billion a year to $309 billion a year.

Or what about Medicare itself? Medicare trustees have figured that covering the system's future deficits would require Washington to place $61.6 trillion in an interest-bearing account -- not next year or today, but three years ago.

But then, it's almost a Beltway rule: Government programs must radically exceed initial cost estimates and growth has to to explode.

Edwards would feed his monster by killing the Bush tax cuts on households earning $200,000 a year or more. Has he learned nothing?

Such a scheme provides families just above that margin with a lot of incentive to fall beneath it. The economic effect might not be felt in Edwards' wallet, but there will be a negative impact nonetheless.

As it is, only about 2.7% of households, or a little more than 3 million, have yearly incomes of at least $200,000. To generate an extra $120 billion, each of them on average would have to to cough up another $40,000 a year in federal taxes. Unless, that is, these Americans were going to fund only part of the $120 billion, as Edwards mentioned earlier this year. If that's the case, who will pay the rest? The candidate owes it to voters to be clearer on this.

But don't hold your breath. The schemes of central planners can't stand too much sunlight. Sen. Hillary Clinton was shrewd enough to craft her own in secret during her husband's White House stay. But she could keep the country in the dark only so long.

Once exposed to the disinfectant of daylight, it unraveled. Edwards' proposal deserves the same treatment.