You'd think it would be impossible for a Democrat these days to come with a plan for extending government's reach that hasn't been discussed to death already. So I have to give John Edwards credit. He is scaring the bejeebers out of me:
TIPTON, Iowa - — 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."
[. . .]
Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.
"The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death," he said.
He actually came right out and said it -- "from birth to death." Other Democrats have proposed a government takeover of health-care delivery. Edwards is audacious enough to want to take over the patient end to -- we'd all have to join in this plan, which would then require us to go to the doctor periodically. Not a single thing about our own health care -- from birth to death -- would be under our control.
