Edwards and The Fight Against Poverty

I had resisted saying much about the hit piece on John Edwards that came out
on Friday, not wanting to give its content free innuendo any credence.
But, I ran across this DailyKos post that exposes some of the false
premises that make up the foundation of the article. Aldon writes:

Theproblem with the New York Times article is manifold. It suggests that
the rich cannot care about poverty, that throwing money at a problem is
the only solution and that candidates cannot care about issues.

The second paragraph leads off by talking about how Sen. Edwards has
assets of nearly $30 million. How is this relevant? It isn’t.
Instead it is promoting an idea rich people can’t be concerned with the
poor. It is the same sort of attack that we saw against Ned Lamont,
whose assets were much greater. This might be a comfortable
self-justification for other rich people not to go out and help the
poor, but it doesn’t fit in with the Christian tradition that reminds
us, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded”,
(Luke 12:48). To suggest that the rich should not or cannot care for
the poor goes against the very core beliefs of our country and causes
our country great damage.

The paragraph continues to contrast the Center for Promise and
Opportunity which organized Sen. Edwards Opportunity Rocks college tour
with “a sister charity he created to raise scholarship money for poor
students”, suggesting that the way to solve problems is only to throw
money at the problem. Yes, we need more money to help poor students
afford a college education. Some of that can come through scholarship
money. More of it should come through our government. Instead of
decreasing the amount of Federal Aid available to students, and forcing
more students to rely on a questionable student loan system, we need
changes in state and federal governments that make college more
affordable. Sen. Edwards has worked hard for these sorts of changes.
The changes we need in our country are much more than an increase in
scholarships for poor students. We need to change the way people think
about our country and our responsibilities. That is why the Center for
Promise and Opportunity is so important.

Yet the most problematic concern with the article is the suggestion
that candidates can’t truly care about the issues. It suggests that
trying to address issues is only for the benefit of the candidate’s
campaign, and not about the issues. It would be like suggesting that
Rep. Kucinich doesn’t really care about the war in Iraq and is
proposing a Department of Peace in an effort to pander to people who
oppose the war, or that Vice President Gore doesn’t care about global
warming and is only raising the issue to keep his viability as a
candidate alive.

Aldon is right on all counts. I expect an expose tomorrow that my congressman’s constituent
services may be tied to maintaining his connections to the district and
his political profile for reelection. A poorly researched article
based on false premises should be beneath the New York Times, maybe
someday it will be again.

Edwards Leads On Healthcare

 

On Thursday John Edwards outlined a couple of add on proposals to hisuniversal health care plan, which was already the most comprehensive one out there. These are aimed primarily at cost savings and the
improvement of health care quality. One of the really interesting parts is that Edwards would mandate that insurance companies spend atleast 85% percent of their revenue on, get this, patient care. Right now an estimated 30% goes to overhead and administration, that’s a huge amount of money being wasted on paper pushing.

The other interesting proposal is outlined by Ezra Klein, whichwould provide prize money to encourage development of treatments fororphan drugs. Here’s Ezra:

Spoketo some folks at Edwards HQ on their proposal for prize money as a spur for pharmaceutical development. This was muddled in their fact sheet and much of the initial reporting, but this program is not, in any way, a replacement for the current system of patents. It does not, in anyway, change the way patents are awarded, or how long they last, or who can apply for them. Rather, it creates a separate and parallel track, a pilot program of sorts, wherein a committee would identify diseases and conditions that would benefit from alternative incentives for innovation, and offer prize money as the reward. An example — not
given to me by anyone at the campaign — would be prize money for malaria treatments, as drugs for conditions affecting mainly third-world residents don’t find a lot of urgency in the R&D departments of publicly-traded pharmaceutical companies.

This is actually a pretty big deal, while it may not be politically a big deal, this is a Presidential campaign that’s engaging in and looking for practical ideas to change things for the better. Edwards is not
just waiting for a consensus to develop in the Senate, he’s leading.