Former Sen. John Edwards Participates in a Families Usa and Federation of American Hospitals Forum On Health Care

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Former Sen. John Edwards Participates in a Families Usa and Federation of American Hospitals Forum On Health Care

FORMER SEN. EDWARDS PARTICIPATES IN FAMILIES USA AND FEDERATION OF AMERICAN HOSPITALS FORUM ON HEALTH CARE

SEPTEMBER 24, 2007

SPEAKERS: FORMER SEN. JOHN EDWARDS, D-N.C.

SUSAN DENTZER, "THE NEWSHOUR WITH JIM LEHRER"

JULIE ROVNER, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

LAURIE MCGINLEY, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

DAVID MUIR, ABC NEWS

[*] DENTZER: Welcome to you, too, Senator Edwards.

We're delighted to be here today for this very important forum.

Now I have the pleasure of introducing my journalistic colleagues, who'll join me today in questioning you, Mr. Senator. They are Laurie McGinley of the Wall Street Journal, Julie Rovner of National Public Radio, and David Muir of ABC News, who's standing in today for ABC's Dr. Tim Johnson.

Now, by prearrangement with the campaigns of each candidate participating in our forums, we posed the same first question in advance, to give the candidates an opportunity to craft a carefully five-minute response -- a carefully crafted, I should say, five-minute response at the outset. We follow the same approach with a closing question, as I'll describe later. For the other questions, we've allotted each candidate up to three minutes for a response.

So, Senator Edwards, you have our opening question, which is this: Do you believe all Americans should have health insurance coverage? And if so, and if you are elected president, how will you move toward this goal?

Please go ahead.

EDWARDS: Thank you.

The answer is yes to the question, and I'll come back to that.

Let me first say thank you to Families USA and to Kaiser for hosting this event, and thanks to the journalists who are participating. I think this is really valuable for America to hear a more in-depth discussion, in much the way Ron just spoke about. We operate in 30- and 60-second sound bites about a huge issue facing Americans and the fact that we can have this in-depth discussion is valuable I think for the country.

I'm not sure how carefully crafted, by the way, my answer is to the first question, but I'll talk about it.

I'm proud of the fact that I was the first presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, to come out with a comprehensive, truly universal health care plan. I'm going to speak about that for a couple of minutes and then I want to say a word about HIV/AIDS, if I can. And then I'll be glad to answer your other questions.

Basically, what my plan does is it has a mandate -- an individual mandate, which means it will be required by law that every man, woman, and child in America have health insurance coverage.

We create health markets around the country that allow consumers to choose what kind of health plan they want. There will be a group of private plans, and there will be competition to determine who actually is able to participate as a private ...

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