HD Blog

This sentence makes a subtle point as the cost of health care.

"We can build one America where we no longer have two healthcare systems. One for people who get the best healthcare money can buy and then one for everybody else, rationed out by insurance companies, drug companies, and HMOs—millions of Americans who don’t have any health insurance at all."

There's a lot in these two sentences. He seems to be advocating nationalized health care which has been disasterous in other countries. Here, he's negative on drug companies and that is unfortunate for the Huntington's Disease community. Without an effective treatment or cure, we need research. If he plans to reduce the ability of pharmaceutical companies to make a profit, it will hurt investment in those companies and it will have the effect of reducing research. Most likely, 'rare' disease would be affected the most as there is less profit potential already. This position is, however, popular with voters as most are concerned with 'costs' and not medical research.

"We have a plan that will offer everyone the same health care your Senator has. We can give tax breaks to help pay for your health care. And we will sign into law a real Patients’ Bill of Rights so you can make your own health care decisions."

Try as I might, I couldn't find anything on the Senate's health care plan. It sounds good, but is it practical and affordable? I'm all for a patient having control over their medical care but, as they say, "the devil is in the details". We'll have to see what they are actually proposing to be in this "Bill of Rights".

(T)he 26 million veterans in this country won’t have to wonder if they’ll have health care next week or next year—they will have it always because they took care of us and we will take care of them.

This sentence is a bit disingenuous. There is no worry about whether veterans will or will not have health care. They'll have it. The problem is..what is the QUALITY of the health care. While the services of the VA have improved over the last 20 years, it still has areas where it is substandard. I'd like to hear more on how they would do to improve it.

So that's the health care elements of Edward's speech. It was a well-written speech that did not do him any harm. He had nothing to say about medical research and there are still a lot of questions and concerns about the health care policies. So we'll have to see if more details come out over time.

I'll be writing about Kerry's acceptance speech shortly and he had several references to health care. In four weeks, the Republicans will be having their convention and I'll write about their speeches as well. I'll be writing about both parties official platforms on health care and medical research in addition to what both candidates have on published on their websites.