Today, somewhere in America, a mother sits with her 3-year-old daughter in the emergency room. She might be there to have a doctor stitch up a cut knee, mend a broken arm, or treat an asthma attack. On her way home, she thanks God that her daughter is all right. And then, she wonders how she's going to pay the bill.

America's health care system is broken and everyone knows it. Premiums keep rising by 15 percent. Businesses can't hire new employees because costs are soaring. And millions of Americans—including 12 million Americans under the age of 21—have no health insurance at all. We know that the time has come to fix it. The question is: how do we tackle this problem in a way that is responsive to the needs of the American people and responsible to future generations?

Nowhere have our leaders forgotten the value of responsibility more than health care. Our health care system costs too much, expects too little, and fails too often. And for too long, Washington has been trapped in a health care debate about which party takes the blame or gets the credit. We need to end that debate, and get something done to help those parents and children flooding our emergency rooms every day.

Today, I am proposing a health care plan that offers a giant step toward providing universal health insurance for every American. The only way we can tackle the health care problem is to ask for responsibility from everyone: responsibility from parents to make sure their children have health care; responsibility from government to help families get insurance and deal with the rising costs, and responsibility from drug and insurance companies to bring costs down for every American.

When it comes to universal coverage, my view is simple: children first. When parents bring a child into this world, they have a responsibility to provide a safe home, a good education, and a lot of love. Every parent wants to do the right thing for his or her child. I believe health insurance should be one of those responsibilities and I want to help parents meet that responsibility.

For the first time in history, every child in America will have health insurance. My plan will also provide significant help to those adults without health care and small businesses that are struggling with their health care costs. My plan strengthens our public health safety net, and it takes bold steps to keep costs down.

But this plan is about more than coverage, it is about a new ethic of responsibility. Government has a responsibility to expand opportunity and live within its means. Drug companies, insurance companies, doctors and lawyers have a responsibility to keep costs down. Businesses have a responsibility to do right by their workers. Those of us in public life have a responsibility to offer proposals we can achieve and that don't pass the buck to future generations. And parents have a responsibility to make sure their children get health care, and we have a responsibility to make sure they can afford it.

President Bush has said that one of the things he wants to have in 2004 is a debate about values. That's exactly the debate we should have, because I do not believe this president's values are the values of the American people. They're certainly not the values that I grew up with in Robbins, North Carolina.

I learned a lot about responsibility when I was growing up. Everyone in my family has worked hard all of their lives, and I was the first person in my family to go to college. My Dad worked in a cotton mill, and my Mom had a number of different jobs, the last one at the post office. And you know why she took that job? So that my parents could have health insurance, thanks to the union.

This is personal for me. I understand what families are going through. They need a president who sees the world through their eyes. They need to know that their president values work and responsibility—not just wealth and privilege. This is what an Edwards Administration would be all about.

My plan is simple, affordable, and fully paid for. Here's how it works:

First, I propose a new bargain with America's parents to make sure every child gets health insurance. If we're going to fix our broken health care system, the responsible place to start is with the greatest injustice—uninsured children.

More than a century ago, we made sure every child in America could get an education. And 60 years ago, President Harry Truman recognized a responsibility that we've not yet met. He said, "The health of American children, like their education, should be recognized as a definite public responsibility."

We can't reach that goal unless both government and parents take responsibility to put children first. The Children's Health Insurance Program is a wonderful achievement. Here in New Hampshire, your program "Healthy Kids" has enrolled 17,000 kids who did not have health insurance before. But there are still millions of children across the country who are not enrolled. Even if the federal government and states did everything right with outreach and education, we'll never cover every child unless we challenge every parent.

We have a responsibility to make sure every family can afford health insurance, and every parent has a responsibility to see that their children have it. To start, we'll make insurance affordable by offering parents a refundable tax credit for health coverage and access to high-quality, low-cost plans. Families who are already meeting their responsibility and face the soaring costs of health care will get the tax credit, too. Parents can use the tax credit to buy health insurance through their employers or parents can cover their children through CHIP.

If you're the average parent who is already covering your kids through your job, my plan will mean only one thing: a new tax break, about $300 a year for a typical family. And if you've always wanted to cover your kids but couldn't, my plan will give you the chance. For poor families, my plan covers every penny of the cost. If you and your spouse have two kids and make around $60,000, you'd have to pay just over a dollar a day to cover all your kids. And if my plan were passed, then 25,000 children in New Hampshire who don't have health insurance would get it.

Next, we'll make it simple and affordable to sign up for coverage. Children will be enrolled at birth in CHIP or private insurance. Parents will enroll children on the first day of school, at any government office or library, or on their tax returns. Parents will get to choose their own health care plan, and plans won't be eligible for the tax credit unless they offer quality coverage with reasonable co-payments and deductibles.

I believe that given the chance, parents will make sure that their children are covered. They want to do the right thing. Those few who don't, we should be prepared to deny tax benefits and make sure those kids are covered. Children don't raise themselves; that's what parents are for. While adults can make choices about their lives, children cannot. Parents must take responsibility to enroll their child in a health care plan, and America will make sure they can afford it.

In addition to covering every child, this plan will also extend special help to the people and businesses who are struggling most with health care. In order to cover another 8 million Americans, I will give states the resources to enroll adults in CHIP and Medicaid. By providing subsidies, working poor adults will be able to get free health insurance.

This proposal reaches out to those Americans who are just starting out in life—as many as two thirds of Americans between the ages of 19 and 29 cannot afford health insurance and 50 percent did not seek medical treatment because they couldn't afford to pay the bill. This is no way to build a life. That's why I will help states cover Americans up to 24 in Medicaid or CHIP. And private insurance companies will be required to provide families with affordable options to cover their children until they turn 25.

We must also address the fastest growing population of the uninsured—those baby boomers between the ages of 55-64. They face premiums that are three and four times higher than the average young American. I want to give them more options to buy into Medicare.

I focus on the sector of our economy that needs help most – small business. Small business is the engine that drives our economy, but small businesses don't have the purchasing power like big corporations to offer insurance.

For small businesses that want to do the responsible thing, I would fund every state to create a purchasing pool that cuts red tape and premiums. We will also offer tax credits to many of those small businesses with low-income workers.

This plan also fulfills our responsibility to strengthen the health care safety net. States are making deep cuts to Medicaid because of this President's fiscal crisis. These cuts affect the poor and the disabled and his latest block grant plan will cause even deeper cuts. Our public hospitals and emergency rooms are understaffed and over crowded and need more support not less.

I will double resources for public health clinics just like this one. I want clinics to be able to keep longer hours so they can serve working families. They need to be in convenient locations: next to schools and shopping malls so parents can use them. And I want to offer mobile clinics that come to the isolated and rural communities too often forgotten by our health care system.

Finally, I will hold insurance companies, drug companies, doctors, and lawyers responsible for keeping health care costs down. We can never meet our responsibilities to one another if the health care system isn't responsible about costs.

Something is wrong when drug companies are spending billions of dollars on advertising for their new drugs while seniors are sitting at their kitchen tables deciding what they can afford: their rent or their medication. Something is wrong when insurance companies raise premiums by 15 percent but fail to use new technologies to lower their cost—like eliminating unnecessary paperwork.

My plan will crack down on drug ads that are misleading or overpromise. We've all seen those ads with the drug companies promising that if you take their medication you'll be running through a field of daisies with your spouse the next second. I will also require the Justice Department to investigate drug companies that overcharge the government. I will take away antitrust and other special exemptions that allow price gouging by the insurance industry. I will prevent and punish frivolous lawsuits that don't belong in court, including a three-strike-and-you're-out policy for lawyers. And I will reduce malpractice by no longer tolerating bad doctors and encouraging voluntary reporting of errors so good doctors can learn from their mistakes.

And unlike this president, I will live up to my responsibility. I will keep my promise to make sure Americans get what they pay for from HMOs and insurance companies by enacting a real Patients' Bill of Rights which I co-authored with Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy.

During this campaign, you'll hear from a lot of us about health care, and that's a good thing. Let me tell you why my plan is different. Instead of taking away tax cuts that middle-class families need, it puts children first and gives parents a new health care tax credit to cover their children. Instead of tax breaks to corporations, it gives tax breaks to parents who need help covering the high costs of health care and small businesses that need help covering their workers.

And instead of spending a fortune we don't have, this one is fully paid for and covers 21 million Americans. That's 93 percent of Americans and 100 percent of children, and it costs about $53 billion a year. That's paid for with offsets I've proposed. It leaves money for education, Social Security, and for paying down the deficit. And instead of pretending we can have something for nothing, my plan tells it like it is: we'll never solve the health care problem until all Americans take responsibility to do their part.

Let's not kid ourselves: All those interests with a stake in the status quo have great lobbyists in Washington. When I arrived in the Senate, one of the first things I noticed was that there were more lobbyists for health insurance and big drug companies in Washington than people in my hometown. Working people like my parents don't have lobbyists looking out for their needs. That's why they need a president who will.

With all those lobbyists, and all those years we've lost on a health care debate that never gets anywhere, it is easy to forget the progress this country can make when we take responsibility. We forget that when America was founded, education was the privilege of the few, until visionaries like Horace Mann launched the crusade for universal public education.

We forget that until 1938, 7 year-olds sold newspapers on the steps of the Capitol from 7am until midnight to make a dollar. 9 year-olds rode the cages down into the coalmines. And young sons and daughters followed their parents into the mills here in Manchester and in North Carolina. Sometimes it took the nation time to realize the wrong in placing children in harm's way, but we've always done the right thing once we did.

And to this day, I will never forget a 5 year-old boy named Ethan Bedrick. He has Cerebral Palsy. I'll never forget watching him try to crawl. Without physical therapy, his arms would become more constricted. His doctor prescribed the therapy, but the HMO refused to pay for it. And my firm took that HMO to court and we won. We had to fight to get that company to do what was right. I want to live in a country where responsibilities are met and 5-year-old boys like Ethan don't have to fight for what they deserve.

It is wrong that 12 million children are with out health insurance. My plan will, for the first time in history, cover each and every one. It takes care of our most vulnerable adults. It helps regular Americans who work their hearts out pay for the high cost of health care. It does so in a way that families and the country can afford.

I believe that one of the great causes for our nation is to ensure that every child begins their life in this country on equal ground—with the health care they need to live healthy and prosperous lives. Unlike this administration, an Edwards Administration will be dedicated to equal opportunity for all, and special privileges for none. This is the America I believe in—a place where our values and sense of responsibility are used to meet our greatest challenges and build a country that moves closer to our shared ideals.

These are the values that matter to people like my Dad, like Ethan's mother, and like the parents and the children who come to the Manchester Community Health Center and Child Health Services in their hour of need. Their values are the values I was raised with, and their fight has been the cause of my life.