John Edwards on Health Care

This is a good speech. Employees being able to take their health care program from job to job is very desirable. Edwards addresses the administrative cost of health care. If he can cut that by 30 to 40 percent he will be the best domestic Franklin President since Roosevelt.

Republicans will hate Edwards' proposal. Heath care is a big business. They will tell their base this is socialized medicine. My attitude is taypayers keep paying more to get less. If any corporation ran their business like the federal government ran Medicare they would go bankrupt. Republicans know universal health care is bad for the party.

Four months earlier, in December 1993, Republican strategiest and writer William Kristol, a Chief of Staff to former Vice President Dan Quayle and Chariman of the Project for the Republican Future, had sent a memorandum to Republican congressional leaders urging them to kill health care reform. The plan, he wrote in the memo, is a “serious political threat to the Republican party,” and its demise would be “a monumental setback for the President.” He wasn’t objecting to the plan on its merits; he was applying partisan political logic. He instructed Republicans to not negotiate on the bill or to compromise. The only good strategy, according to Kristol, was to kill the plan outright. The memo didn’t mention the millions of Americans without insurance.

People are going to look back and realize how horrible Kristol was for America.