Does John Edwards need a brain transplant?

Among the Dems
he is one who talk something reasonable.
Unfortunately USA is a ( soup/super) country

Re: Does John Edwards need a brain transplant?

flaja you silly goose, did she die or is she just supposedly dead?

400 § for hair cut?
Silly
dirty Americans should see the people under the bridge and be not carried away by the half-baked potatoes in WP or NYT or CNN

The choice between the two leading Democratic candidates is really between favoring the vast amount one doesn't know about Obama over the vast amount one should know about Clinton but which too many ignore. It is a choice between a guess and the gross, the unknown hustler and the known perp, the blank page over an overflowing, disingenuous and dishonorable record.

Mae West said that when faced with the choice between two evils, she always picked the one she hadn't tried before. This is clearly a strong argument for Obama, but fortunately we still have another choice left: John Edwards, whose proposals are the most progressive of the lot and whose supporters include those among the most active in pushing for real change and not just gossamer clouds of undefined hope.

Even if Edwards can't win the election, he will definitely win the argument because an America that succeeds will adopt his approach and one that fails will be sorry it hadn't. A fantasized future or a falsified past won't save America: real progress for real people just might.
http://prorev.com/obama.htm

Ask corporate lobbyists which presidential contender is most feared by their clients and the answer is almost always the same -- Democrat John Edwards.

The former North Carolina senator's chosen profession alone raises the hackles of business people. Before entering politics, he made a fortune as a trial lawyer.

In litigious America, trial lawyers bring lawsuits against companies on behalf of aggrieved individuals and sometimes win multimillion-dollar settlements. Edwards won several.

But beyond his profession, Edwards' tone and language on the campaign trail have increased business antipathy toward him. His stump speeches are peppered with attacks on "corporate greed" and warnings of "the destruction of the middle class."

He accuses lobbyists of "corrupting the government" and says Americans lack universal health care because of "drug companies, insurance companies and their lobbyists."

Despite not winning the two state nominating contests completed so far, with 48 to go, Edwards insists he is in the race to stay. An Edwards campaign spokesman said on Thursday that inside-the-Beltway operatives who fight to defend the powerful and the privileged should be afraid.

"The lobbyists and special interests who abuse the system in Washington have good reason to fear John Edwards.

"Once he is president, the interests of middle class families will never again take a back seat to corporate greed in Washington," said campaign spokesman Eric Schultz.

Open attacks on the business elite are seldom heard from mainstream White House candidates in America, despite skyrocketing CEO pay, rising income inequality, and a torrent of scandals in corporate boardrooms and on Wall Street.

But this year Edwards is not alone. Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, sometimes also rails against corporate power and influence, tapping a populist current that lies just below the surface of U.S. politics.

One business lobbyist, who asked not to be named, said Edwards "has gone to this angry populist, anti-business rhetoric that borders on class warfare ... He focuses dislike of special interests, which is out there, on business."

Another lobbyist said an Edwards presidency would be "a disaster" for his well-heeled industrialist clients.

After this week's New Hampshire primaries, where he placed a distant third behind New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Edwards might not seem so scary. He ran second in the Iowa Democratic caucuses last week, trailing Obama and just ahead of Clinton.

Edwards suffered a blow on Thursday when Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry snubbed him and endorsed Obama. Edwards was Kerry's vice-presidential running mate in Kerry's failed Democratic bid for the White House in 2004.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011108T.shtml

Kerry wasn't a fighter. If Kerry were a fighter, he'd have fought for every last vote to be counted in Ohio, and we would not have had a second term of George W. Bush who didn't even deserve a first term.

Still, it would be ingenuous to think, even for a minute, that only the experienced stick with the tried and true. No one who is unprepared, or unwilling, to take a risk belongs in the Oval Office, in the first place. George Washington took risks, John Adams, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy---even Richard Nixon took risks; not all risks are created equal, after all.

Make no mistake, whether one likes Hillary Clinton is beside the point just as whether one likes Barack Obama is also beside the point, the only candidate who has stated emphatically that he will withdraw all troops from Iraq is John Edwards. The only candidate not beating the war drums with respect to Iran or Pakistan is John Edwards. Moreover, the only Democratic contender not luxuriating in generalities and abstractions is John Edwards.

And, ultimately, the candidate, besides Dennis Kucinich, who poses the greatest risk to the corporate lobbies, and big business in Washington, is John Edwards. Edwards is a fighter which is what we need if the Democrats are to regain the White House in 2008. Edwards is a fighter which is what we need if we are to wrestle with economic inequality, and restore equity and a middle class. He will fight for the working man and woman at the expense of the corporate elite. With Edwards, we will see more of our children in college than on the front lines of battle.

Yes, and go figure, John Edwards just happens to be the guy the corporate-owned media is squeezing out of the race as they try to figure out how to siphon off his votes while racheting up John McCain. Well, guess what, winning one or two primaries doesn't make a presidential candidate any more than losing one or two breaks one.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jayne_ly_080113_john_edwards_3a__too_s.htm

Edwards' single biggest problem with progressive voters has been his pivotal role back in 2002 as one of the most strident among the minority of Democrats on Capitol Hill who supported Bush's demand for Congressional authorization to invade Iraq. Indeed, were it not for the support by Edwards and his Democratic colleagues--who then controlled the Senate--there would be no need to be concerned about a genocide, an al-Qaeda safe haven, the spread of a civil war, the protection of a Green Zone or American personnel, or any of the other functions for which he would spend billions of dollars and risk American lives in the coming years if elected.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4840

The Forbes piece begs the question. What is wrong is that people who cannot afford insurance are essentially told that they can just drop dead.

Recently, info came out of a study showing that uninsured cancer patients are twice as likely to die.

I guess the message is that poor are not worthy of decent health care.

Edwards is right.

The person who died obviously had health insurance. Otherwise the insurance company would not have had the opportunity to refuse to pay for the transplant because the odds were against it being a success.

The biggest problem with this issue is that we expect medical miracles and when the miracles prove to be a pipe dream, liberals demonize insurance companies and hospitals.

thanks for posting the link flaja, although i had to do a search at the Forbes site to find the article. obviously, Cigna didn't klll the teenager, and if Edwards stated or implied that they had, he should be ashamed of himself for acting like a demagogue. (there may be a joke in there about democrat & demagogue, but being a dem myself, i won't go there.)

for anyone not knowing the details, which as the article points out are sketchy because of patient-doctor confidentiality, Cigna refused to pay for a liver transplant when requested, *but* then the transplant surgeons appealed the decision, rather than go ahead & perform the transplant unpaid. ironically enough, Cigna eventually reversed itself, but then the patient expired. Cigna is responsible to the extent that had they approved it initially, the transplant would have taken place, but i would personally fault the physicians more for not proceeding with the operation regardless.

You may recall congressional hearings a year or so ago in which a doctor employed by an insurance company said that his compensation increased were he to turn down coverage.

I think that any doctor in practice will tell you of the tremendous abuse by insurance companies. Why dwell on this one case?

I'd like to know how a cancer patient went to the head of the transplant list. I've always thought transplant organs were too scarce to risk giving them to people that have other life-threatening conditions. I don't see how a cancer patient could be a good candidate for a liver transplant. I cannot help but think that this girl was moved to the top of the list in order to make her a political issue.

Yeah, you're right. In fact, I bet that once CIGNA finally O.K.'d the procedure, her parents killed her to so that they could sue the insurance company! Yeah, those greedy, selfish sick people!

Beause there is an idiot politician who is using it to his benefit.

i happen to be in a hotel room, with the movie "John Q" playing on TNT i think. i didn't see "John Q" when it came out in '02 and was panned for being implausible, but the Sarkisyan family's troubles bear a surprising similarity to the movie. (in "John Q" the hospital staff were the main villains, however)

The simple fact of the matter is that no matter how we organize our healthcare systems, there is no way for us to have healthcare without paying for it.

Once this unavoidable fact is accepted, one should eventually come to the realization that there must be limits of one type or another put on the extent of healthcare made available to patients.

Its easy to focus on this single tragic case and insist that Cigna should have agreed to pay for the transplant early on, or that the doctors and hospital should have proceeded with the transplant even without the expectation of getting paid. However it is unfortunately the case that this is not so isolated an situation. There a hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of patients facing death who might benefit from extremely expensive procedures that offer only remote chances of success. The healthcare system, literally, cannot afford to provide these services without cost, and so passing laws or enacting regulations that require that Insurers pay for all potentially life saving procedures or doctors and hospitals perform these procedures whether or not they can be paid will lead to a bankrupt system.

For some, the easy solution is universal healthcare provided by the government.

Obviously this too has a cost: Much higher taxes, reduced services in other sectors, and a reduction in the quality of products and services provided.

Guess what?

No matter what approach we take there will instances such as this one where someone dies before she can be treated. Perhaps one prefers to rant and rail against cruel and selfish disease profiteers over the criminal incompetence of the faceless bureaucracy, but either way the patient will still be dead.

In order to control the cost of healthcare and see to it that the benefits of whatever system we adopt are most widely and equitably spread, we must accept limitations on the extent of care that is to be provided. For patients who are deathly ill, and whose care is being paid for by a third party, there is no treatment with too slim a chance of success or too high a price tag. Clearly their wishes cannot be deciding.

Finn
I appreciate your philosophical counter argument.
May I humbly request you to give your views about this.
I was born in India where government hospitals take care of the needy and where some hightech quickfix rich can get treated in private palaces.
It works without conflict.
India is not that much wealthy as USA.
I live in Germany.
Here is almost the same pattern but far far better than in India.
My Q is this.
How come a country which spreads decency, democracy around the globe and land easily in Moon struggles to deprive the needy unhealthy people.
None make use of health care unless they are forced to.
Cuba a neighbouring beloved friend of USA is offering the minimum need for all.
Awaiting for your valuable views and offering my regards and respects in advance
Rama

Healthcare works pretty well here too, and without much conflict.

The case in point should not be used as proof of anything, other than the premise that patients and their families want any and all treatments that have any possibility of saving the life of the patient. If every doctor consulted, indicated the procedure had less than 10% chance of success, the family still would have wanted to try it. This is, of course, perfectly understandable, but it is also not financially sustainable. If the patient lived in India or Germany, the family would have wanted the procedure performed. I don't profess to know much at all about the healthcare systems in India or Germany but I do know that they must, in some way, limit the care provided.

The issue of healthcare in this country has to some degree become irrational and is clearly a political football.

Not having insurance is not the same as not being able to get healthcare. If illegal aliens in this country get healthcare when they need it, then so can citizens. In fact this is one of the credible arguments for taking steps to see that everyone is insured - it's a lot more expensive to go the ER with the flu than to your doctor. My eldest son, although he has a fine job with adequate benefits, decided that he would bet on the odds of a healthy young man and go without insurance. He's not the only one among his friends to make this foolish decision.

Democrats exaggerate domestic threats like healthcare, hunger, and homlessness, the way they claim Republicans exaggerate foreign threats. Having worked so hard over so many years developing social safety nets, it's ironic that they have so little faith in them, but then you can never conquer an enemy if your political power and wealth is tied to continuously fighting it.

Thanks a lot sir.
Rama