A Few Links About John Edwards' Health Plan

Short video of John Edwards on Meet the Press explaining a bit about his health care plan which seems to be shaping up to be one of the more prominent planks in his platform.

In The New Republic, there's an article asking "How Populist is John Edward's New Health Care Plan?" It requires a free registration to read it, but I don't want to post it all here it's quite lengthy, but here's an excerpt and if you have a couple seconds to register, check it out.

... The scheme he formally unveiled yesterday is far more sweeping than the one he trotted out four years ago, starting with the fact that it would actually bring insurance to every American. And it seems even more grandiose if you focus on the details, which open the door to a far more comprehensive makeover of American health care than the mainstream analysis in the press suggests. All of this is good--very good, in fact.

Still, there's a caveat. The new Edwards plan is not as far-reaching as some plans now circulating in Congress including plans that call for remaking the health care system top-to-bottom by creating a single-payer system modeled on Medicare. Precisely because the Edwards plan comes from the candidate positioning himself as the voice of working-class populism, that makes the final product just a tad disappointing...

And finally, economist Paul Krugman weighs in saying that John Edwards' health plan "Gets it Right" After a discussion of how Edwards' Plan is similar to others out there, he points out what he sees aas its defining strengths.

Mr. Edwards goes two steps further.

People who don't get insurance from their employers wouldn't have to deal individually with insurance companies: they'd purchase insurance through "Health Markets": government-run bodies negotiating with insurance companies on the public's behalf. People would, in effect, be buying insurance from the government, with only the business of paying medical bills - not the function of granting insurance in the first place - outsourced to private insurers.

Why is this such a good idea? As the Edwards press release points out, marketing and underwriting - the process of screening out high-risk clients - are responsible for two-thirds of insurance companies' overhead. With insurers selling to government-run Health Markets, not directly to individuals, most of these expenses should go away, making insurance considerably cheaper.

Better still, "Health Markets," the press release says, "will offer a choice between private insurers and a public insurance plan modeled after Medicare." This would offer a crucial degree of competition. The public insurance plan would almost certainly be cheaper than anything the private sector offers right now - after all, Medicare has very low overhead. Private insurers would either have to match the public plan's low premiums, or lose the competition.