No Health Care for Appointees?

On a day when Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was trying to draw attention to her proposal for universal health care, one of her rivals, John Edwards sought to one-up her with an out-of the-box proposal of his own. According to the Edwards campaign, at a speech before the Laborers Leadership Convention in Chicago, Edwards said:

On the first day of my administration, I will submit legislation that ends health care coverage for the president, all members of Congress, and all senior political appointees in both branches of government on July 20th, 2009 -- unless we have passed universal health care reform.

There's already some chatter in the blogosphere about the possibly dubious constitutionality of this idea, at least as it applies to members of Congress. (The 27th Amendment says, "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.")

"Senior political appointees," though, could be out of luck. But maybe Schedule Cs will get to keep their coverage.

Update: By the way, it's worth noting the first item in Clinton's plan unveiled today:

Americans can keep their existing coverage or access the same menu of quality private insurance options that their Members of Congress receive through a new Health Choices Menu, established without any new bureaucracy as part of the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP). In addition to the broad array of private options that Americans can choose from, they will be offered the choice of a public plan option similar to Medicare.