Presidential hopeful John Edwards on Monday proposed spending up to $120 billion a year to fix America’s “dysfunctional” health care system by requiring health insurance for all Americans and helping to make it more affordable.
The North Carolina Democrat said his health care plan, the first offered by a 2008 White House candidate, was designed to force private companies, government and individuals to share responsibility for insurance coverage.
The price tag would be covered by eliminating President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for those making more than $200,000 a year and cracking down on unpaid taxes.
He said his plan could succeed where others have failed in part because the political climate has changed. Edwards said his plan to cover nearly 47 million uninsured Americans and make health care more affordable and efficient will be at the center of the 2008 presidential race.
Edwards, the Democratic V.P. nominee in ‘04 on the John Kerry-led ticket, said that health care in the U.S. has gotten more dysfunctional by the year.
“The undercurrent for health care reform has become more powerful. People are concerned, not only about the millions of Americans without health care coverage, but if they have it that they will lose it and the cost is so high.”
The plan would create tax credits to subsidize coverage, expand Medicaid and require businesses to offer health care to employees or contribute to their coverage through newly-created, regional non-profit purchasing pools - offering competing insurance plans and controling costs.
Edwards said the plan would allow enough flexibility for consumers to make choices about their insurance without creating burdens on business.
The proposal drew fire from Republican critics, who said Americans would reject a candidate who runs promising higher taxes and more government.
“The 2003 Bush tax cuts produced one of the broadest and strongest economic expansions in the nation’s history,” said Pat Toomey, president of the anti-tax group Club for Growth.
“It is mind-boggling that John Edwards would seek to derail that expansion for the sake of his big-government, collectivist schemes.”
Other Democratic candidates, including Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, support a goal of universal health care but have not offered concrete plans yet on how to get there.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York presided over the last failed effort to overhaul the health care system in the early ’90s when she was First Lady. Edwards campaigned for increased health insurance coverage for children in 2004, but did not go down the road of a universal plan for adults.
He said the problem is worse now than 2004, and one of the top three issues in 2008, along with the Iraq war and the growing crisis of energy dependency.
“We can’t make America stronger with incremental changes,” he said. “We need significant, transformational change - it’s true in health care, it’s true with energy policy and it’s true in how America deals with the world.”
