More on Healthcare

One of my favorite blogs is Shakespeare's Sister. It's the only political blog I read regularly, and I like it because Shakespeare's Sister (a.k.a. Melissa McEwan) and her co-contributors are smart, funny, and not afraid to say what they think. Sometimes they say things in a way that is a bit coarse, shall we say, but I'm not offended by coarse language. Despite the coarse language, it's a feminist- and GLBT-positive and safe space, where people are safe to speak their minds (at least, it was, before the recent troll infestation). I generally agree with most of what they say on the issues and Melissa's very clear prose has helped me strengthen my own positions on many issues.

I was very happy for Melissa when she got the John Edwards campaign blogging gig, and I had a somewhat sleepless night after I heard that her job might be on the line due to some self-proclaimed Catholic church spokesman's claims of bigotry against the church in her writings. I'm not really sure where he got that idea from (aside from perhaps a very dark and poopy place) because while I'm sure Melissa has criticized certain policies of the Catholic church, disagreement does not equal bigotry. In any case, Melissa was not fired and that made me happy (although the negative publicity surrounding this issue is the source of these recent trolls).

Her foray into political blogging made me decide to take the time to look into John Edwards' platform, and I was excited to see what his healthcare proposal would entail. (As my regular readers know, I am a proponent of universal healthcare and this is a very important issue to me.) Edwards proposes to require employers to provide or help pay for health insurance for their employees, encourage employers with tax credits and expand existing government programs, create regional health insurance pools, give the indigent prepaid tax refunds to pay for their premiums, and once the infrastructure is in place, require all Americans to have health insurance.

Realistically, a single-payer system is not an option in this country, because there are too many lobbyists for the health insurance companies. I thought that his proposal was actually very clever, because it left health insurance companies in the game, while forcing them to become more efficient if they expect to compete with government-sponsored plans.

I don't like the fact that health insurance would still be tied to your employer, because of the privacy issues I have mentioned before, but I think this proposal is a step in the right direction. I admit that my heart has been stricken with "Obamania", as they call it on The Daily Show, (my vote was one of many in his landslide Senate victory) but Edwards is winning my mind over with his healthcare plan.