Spread 'Em

If Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards gets his way, every American will be forced to periodically go to the doctor whether he wants to or not. Speaking in Iowa, he said:

It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care. 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.

Of course, preventive care is a good idea, but when Mr. Edwards says that it will be "required," one immediately wonders how the federal government would enforce mandatory check ups? Mr. Edwards is all about universal coverage, so one would think that he would consider the threat of loss of coverage to be counterproductive. Would he instead propose criminal penalties? What are the other enforcement alternatives?

So will failure to get a prostate exam be a felony or a misdemeanor under Mr. Edwards' law?

Update. Steve Bainbridge suggests that this proposal may be more "totalitarian than the old Soviet system.