John Edwards and health care

By Michael J.W. Stickings

John Edwards came out yesterday with a plan for what he calls "universal health care through shared responsibility". As he put in in an e-mail to supporters: "47 million people are uninsured, while uncertainty grows and costs spiral for nearly everyone else. To fix this crisis, we don't need an incremental shift, we need a fundamental change."

47 million people are uninsured: This is truly one of the great American embarrassments, an injustice on such a vast scale that I wonder when I think of it how America can claim to be a great nation at all.

Edwards offers a comprehensive "plan to strengthen America’s health care system and insure all Americans by 2012". This is what separates him from Clinton and Obama, not to mention the Republicans. How do they intend to remedy this problem. Perhaps they intend not to. Perhaps they have no plan at all. Not yet anyway. Or perhaps, if they're on the other side, they oppose any plan at all.

This is another good reason, if you haven't yet done so, to give Edwards a serious look.

There will be powerful forces lined up against him, tp be sure, forces that have an interest in perpetrating and perpetuating this injustice. Edwards has the courage and conviction to stand up to them.

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You can read all about his plan here.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, Edwards's new blogmaster, posted on it here. As well as here, where she linked to Ezra Klein, who analyzed the plan here. WaPo covers the story here.