You read that right.  His mandatory health plan that will cover everyone also includes mandatory appointments, meaning if you are enrolled, and everyone has to, you MUST go to the doctor according to the plan.

The story comes from Ann Althouse, via Hot Air.

Edwards backs mandatory preventive care

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.”

Repeat, with emphasis:

“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.”

This wins the top prize of nanny state government.  Look, I agree that the idea, the concept of a national health care system is attractive.  Having paid outrageous premiums and even gone without health care several times, I think it would be a good thing as a fall back plan.  But this is the first time that I have heard of a catch, that you must do what they tell you.

What might that be?  One obvious one:

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.