John Answers Hillary

Here is what John Edwards has to say about Hillary's healthcare plan.

The lesson Senator Clinton seems to have learned from her experience with health care is, ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.’ I learned a very different lesson from decades of fighting powerful interests - you can never join ‘em, you just have to beat ‘em.

If you’re going to negotiate universal health care with the same powerful interests that killed it before, your proposal isn’t a plan, it’s a starting point. I’d like to know what a principled compromise looks like on universal health care. When you cut the deal on universal, who gets left out? And if you don’t compromise on the universal part, does that mean you compromise on the health care part? Lower quality? Higher costs? I don’t believe in it.

In the America I believe in, we don’t compromise our principles. I will not compromise on universal health care - not on coverage, not on quality, not on cost. I’ll fight for it with everything I’ve got.

And to show Congress just how serious I am, on the first day of my administration, I will submit legislation that ends health care coverage for the president, all members of Congress, and all senior political appointees in both branches of government on July 20th, 2009 - unless we have passed universal health care reform.

There are four principles that have to be met: it must be truly universal. Anyone who has health care must be able to keep it, but they should pay less for it. Anyone who doesn’t have health care must get it, with help if they can’t afford it. Doctors and patients, not insurance companies and HMOs, must have control of health care decisions.

The American people have waited long enough. Six months will be hard, but we can do it. Six months to universal health care. Six months to real change. Without compromise.

Millions of Americans live without health care every day. It’s time for Washington to understand that health care reform isn’t a political issue - it’s a moral issue. If they do, we’ll finally have universal health care.

Ditto