Posted on 04/04/2008 9:32:27 AM PDT by presidio9
Elizabeth Edwards told some 500 health journalists the other day that John McCain’s health care plan was like “painting lipstick on a pig,” an expression from her neck of the woods that in this case means lofty-sounding words that pretty up some ideas that could hurt ordinary people who don’t understand what’s going on; that is, unless journalists tell them. The language of his plan sounds good, she argued, making it “hard to understand what’s wrong with it. “Someone has to translate for the public.” Edwards challenged reporters to do just that.
Translating for the public is good advice for journalists about the health platforms of all three major candidates, and Edwards, of course, is a partisan. But she’s worth hearing out.
First, she zoomed in on McCain’s proposal that would allow families “to purchase health insurance nationwide, across state lines, to maximize their choices, and heighten competition for their business that will eliminate excess overhead, administrative, and excess compensation costs from the system.” Nice sounding words, Edwards pointed out; who can be against excess compensation except those who receive excess competition? Who doesn’t want to maximize choices, and want to believe that heightened competition is a good thing? But underneath those words, Edwards said, lurks the real meaning of McCain’s plan—relieving insurance companies from the burden of state regulation that sometimes does crack down on abusive practices, as the Los Angeles Times noted in California last month, for example.
Edwards’ interpretation:under McCain’s plan, policyholders would lose valuable consumer protections in some states that would no longer be able to enforce their laws. How is this better for consumers? McCain, Edwards argues, is “trying to give companies a pass on regulation by allowing a national playing field”—another of those pretty, hard-to-argue-with phrases that could spell danger. (And Edwards may have a point. It’s wise to dredge up from memory the “national playing field” arguments that were used years ago when banks, many regulated by the states, were allowed to move their operations to South Dakota, with its lax regulation, a shift across state lines that sowed some of the seeds of the consumer credit crises the country currently faces.) And as Edwards sees it, McCain’s health plan would give insurance companies carte blanch to sell whatever they want at whatever price by whatever sales tactics reel in the most prospects.
So taking Edwards’ advice to parse McCain’s language, let’s take another example. McCain wants to “reform the tax code to eliminate the bias toward employer-sponsored health insurance, and provide all individuals with a $2,500 tax credit ($5,000 for families) to increase incentives for insurance coverage.” Eliminating that “bias” could mean that employers may no longer deduct health insurance as a business expense, which would surely further reduce the amount of such employer group coverage and perhaps spark a movement to get employers to stop offering coverage altogether. (Even though the number is dropping, roughly 60 percent of people still get insurance from their employers.) If employers wipe out health insurance, more of their workers would have to wade into the jungle of the individual insurance market, where prices are high and only the fittest can buy a policy. Those who have had cancer—like both Edwards and McCain—would face a challenge.
Does one of McCain’s other proposals—that “insurance should be innovative, moving from job to home, job to job, and providing multi-year coverage”—include the “innovation” of getting rid of restrictions on covering pre-existing conditions that often keep people from just such a move? “As I traveled around the country,” Edwards said, “the thing I head most was the problem with pre-existing conditions. Coverage for pre-existing conditions is enormously important to people.” Most people don’t understand why they can’t buy insurance to pay for the very medical problems they have—a uniquely American notion.
It’s up to reporters to explain, and to parse the pretty phrases.
She would know all about that....
She’s putting lipstick on Howard Dean?
Ewwwww!
People were just fascinated with her husband’s health care plan though. As it sank beneath the waters without leaving a ripple.
Something she's had to do every morning for decades.
Anyone who doesn't understand that doesn't understand the concept of insurance.
The wholesale ignorance of basic economics in this country never ceases to amaze me.
In other words, like Elizabeth Edwards.
This sentence needs to win some kind of award! How condescending can you get?
Does dear Trudy tell us why we should care what Elizabeth Edwards thinks about John McCain's health policy?
Or, for that matter, anything else?
That is an incredible statement of ignorance. And also a failure of her beloved public schools not to educate students on the realities of economics and finance.
Yep. Gotta have their fourth branch to protect the nitwits in flyover country.
And here I thought Kervorkian was dying in prison, and that’s why he got released. Now he’s running for Congress.
So excuse me, if I’m a bit skeptical about Elizabeth Edward’s “cancer.”
That's easy for you to say. Next you'll tell me I can't insure the beautiful home I just built on the side of a volcano? Sure that volcano was pre-existing, but it's very important to me.
Unless John McCain’s plan is specifically to:
1) Get the government out of the health care business
2) Decrease governmental regulation on health care
3) Tort reform so that doctor’s can practice the business of health without the constant threat of ridiculously padded lawsuits
...then his plan IS putting lipstick on a pig.
“like painting lipstick on a pig”
She should know. She does it every day.
Hey, if she’s right I’m going to start selling life insurance to dead people!
Another Democrat woman lawyer/political wife who should never get into the White House. There must be a thousand of these crabby battle-axes who think we need to hear their whining on a daily basis. If they are so smart, why did they marry their husbands?
It's been carefully done, from an important link to Columbia U. -- the Frankfurt School of the mid-1900's, an organization all Freepers should know about.
What an ass. She (and her husband John), Obama and Clinton want to “fix” the system.
Let’s see, how about this for a start.
1) Get States to admit more doctors to medical schools and pass the boards. The same applies to nurses.
2) Get Congress to stop or greatly relax litigation against the medical community.
3) Allow other people to practice medicine. That is, as Milton Friedman advocated, let non-registered folks practice.
Of course, these are free market solutions. The Dems don’t want to do any of them. Rather, they want to manage the insurance companies.
Was she wearing lipstick when she made the comment?
So, did she verbally say it was “like putting lipstick on a pig”, or did she just say it “was like” and then held up a picture of herself?
“Edwards spent some of her childhood attending school in Japan, where her father, Vincent Anania (1920–2008), an Italian-American United States Navy pilot, was stationed. She attended Mary Washington College and then transferred to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill receiving an undergraduate degree and completing three years of graduate work in English, as well as earning a J.D. at the same institution. She met John Edwards when they were both law students there. They married on July 30, 1977.”
So where are those economics qualifications that allow her to tell us what is good or not regarding health care policies?
Being married to an ambulance chaser is not a qualification, any more than being married to a chubby chaser qualifies Hillary to be president.
I just love “Aw shucks” philosophy. Don’t you?
Of course, this does not distinguish her, in any way, from every other Liberal, who merits 'face-time' on TV and who also is compelled to share the 'worst'.
There is just something about this woman that I just don’t like. You know how sometimes you just get a feeling... well the red lights flash with this one.
The Voice of Experience Speaks!!
I think your last sentence sums up things nicely.
I was unaware that Elizabeth...er...John Edwards was still running for president.
Well there still is that pesky little number of delegates John has to think about. That makes them relevant I guess?
Kettle black ping.
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