John Edwards' "WTF?" Moment

Anyone who unquestioningly supports a politician is either a sheep or an idiot. No matter how much you may cheer a candidacy, no matter how many envelopes you stuff, or doorbells you ring, there's always going to be one little nagging thing about the candidate you've chosen to support that makes you nuts. I'm supporting John Edwards this year because he's the closest thing to a real progressive we have, and because he alone defeats ALL of the Republican parade of old fearmongering white guys with bad ties -- even Frederick of Hollywood. Of course his wife is awesome, and that he is still very much enamored of a woman who is not a "trophy" in the conventional, men-thinking-with-their-dicks sort of way, says all kinds of Good Things About Him as a person. But what I'm more concerned with is where he stands on the issues, and for the most part, he's in the right place.

But while I understand where it comes from, given his wife's open admission that she had been "too busy" to get a mammogram, this:

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

``It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,'' he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. ``If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.''

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat ``the first trace of problem.'' Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.

Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.

``The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death,'' he said.

....is some really scary shit.

I understand where he's coming from. I really do. But there's something about telling women they HAVE to get mammograms that seems not so much different from telling women they HAVE to carry that unwanted pregnancy to term.

I am currently in a sort of informal "bet the ranch" situation with my sister where mammograms are concerned. I get them, she doesn't. Do they save lives? Or are they no different from those heavily-advertised "LifeLine Screenings Coming To Your Town" -- just another way for the medical establishment to bring in tons of money on tests with dubious value?

But "mandatory preventive care" goes beyond mammograms. When we know that it's not unusual for doctors to accept gifts from the very pharmaceutical companies that Edwards has said will not have a place at the health care policy table, what constitutes "preventive care"? Prescriptions for statins? Everyone regards statins as beneficial in lowering cholesterol with no down side, right? Not so fast:

When Jim Matthews needed to slash his cholesterol and heart attack risk, he joined the millions taking the world's top-selling drug, Lipitor.

After five weeks, he was struck by cognitive chaos and confusion.

All of a sudden, he found himself asking: "Did I go get the mail or did I just think I was going to go get the mail? Did I give my dog her thyroid pill, or did I just think I gave the dog the thyroid pill?"

He couldn't function for hours.

When he came back to his senses, he suspected Lipitor was to blame, but only found one glowing report after another on Lipitor and similar drugs - all called statins.

In fact, some doctors are so high on statins, they seem to think most everyone should take them, that there's no down side. Lipitor's maker even says it may help Alzheimer's patients.

But researcher Dr. Beatrice Golomb warns the studies generating the bulk of the positive press were funded by the companies that make the drugs, like Pfizer, which earns $9 billion a year from Lipitor.

One-size-fits-all medicine based on "conventional wisdom" and "medical consensus" that doesn't take into account the variances in individuals is as dangerous as no medicine at all. The big variance has to do with weight, where BMI is the Holy Grail of determining obesity, and obesity (as defined by BMI) is the current catch-all for all health ills. I've already related my tale of having to find a new gynecologist after twenty years of going to one who never hassled me about my weight. Six months before demanding that I go on this crazy crash diet involving acupressure beads and alternating days of consuming 20 ounces of whole milk one day, 1-1/2 pounds of steamed vegetables the next, repeated as you lose a guaranteed fifteen pounds a month or more, her response to my lament about menopausal weight gain had been "Welcome to menopause." Now I can't go back because I won't have gone on her medically unsound diet that she went on to look good at her high school reunion -- and now I have to try to find another doctor who isn't going to deem me unworthy of care because my BMI isn't under 30.

Thorn at Shapely Prose posted this summer about her mother, who died from Deep Vein Thrombosis because she was afraid to go to a doctor after having been told many years before not to come back until she lost fifty pounds. This is how doctors treat overweight people. So when John Edwards talks about mandatory preventive care, is part of that bargain that doctors have to treat patients like human beings? People are as individual as snowflakes. One person can eat anything he wants, never move out of a chair, and stay thin. Another person can exercise every day, eat fruits, vegetables and lean meats, and wear a size sixteen. I know a man who runs every day, is in great shape, and takes statins because high cholesterol runs in his family.

Advocacy of "preventive health care" that does not take into account a certain skepticism towards conventional medicine is unacceptable. Mandatory "preventive health care" that does not take into account pollution of the food supply with pesticides and hormones, that does not take into account Frankenfoods such as high fructose corn syrup and white flour, which are metabolized in such a way as to promote obesity, that does not take into account the health effects of stress which comes from living in constant fear that your job will be outsourced or eliminated if you dare to take a day off, and that does not take into account the many other factors that produce cancer and other diseases is unacceptable.

Edwards' heart may be in the right place, but this as policy is absurd -- and counterproductive. I am trying to get a response from the campaign about these questions, and will post if I do.

UPDATE: Here is the response from the Edwards campaign:

"It is mandatory for health insurance plans offered through Health Care Markets to offer low-cost or free preventive care.

There will also be incentives for individuals, such as lower premiums, who have a good record taking advantage of this care."