Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have of late engaged in a back-and-forth over their respective health care plans. Now John Edwards is swinging into the fray with a plan that is best summed up in a single word: Totalitarian. Not making this up.

“I’m mandating healthcare for every man woman and child in America and that’s the only way to have real universal healthcare.”

“Evertime you go into contact with the helathcare system or the govenment you will be signed up.”

During a press avail following the event Edwards reiterated his mandate:

“Basically every time they come into contact with either the healthcare system or the government, whether it’s payment of taxes, school, going to the library, whatever it is they will be signed up.”

When asked by a reporter if an individual decided they didn’t want healthcare Edwards quickly responded, “You don’t get that choice.“

“You don’t get that choice.” I could go the predictable route and note that Edwards is pro-choice when it comes to aborting babies but he’s anti-choice when it comes to buying health insurance. And I could even use his own pro-abort language against him to play up the irony, like this.

Q: What is your view on the decision on partial-birth abortion and most of the public agreeing with the court’s holding?

A: This decision by the Supreme Court is a perfect example of what’s at stake in this election. The kind of people that will be appointed to the US Supreme Court by the next president will control whether a woman’s freedom, freedom to choose, make her own health care decisions will be made by her or will be made by the government or by some men sitting on the US Supreme Court.

She can make her own “health care” decisions to kill, but not to decide whether health insurance itself is really in her interests or not. Gotcha.

So I’ll note all of that, but I’m more curious about something else: How does Silky plan on enforcing his plan to take away the choice to opt out of health care insurance? Say you’re uninsured by choice and you go to the doctor for some innocuous thing or another, and on your way out the receptionist starts enrolling you in some insurance plan that you don’t want. Suppose you refuse to answer the receptionist’s questions, questions probing for personal info and the like that goes on the enrollment form. What’s Silky’s enforcement mechanism? Do the state police get a call to come pick you up and find ways of making you talk to the receptionist? Does the Silky administration levy some giant fine on you and then turn around and use the proceeds to buy you a health plan that you don’t want? Will the IRS garnish your wages? Is John Edwards going to criminalize your choice to opt out of health care insurance?

What’s the plan, man? You can’t just toss up a mandate without putting some legal teeth behind it, or you haven’t really done anything that’s likely to change anyone’s behavior. So show us your teeth, Silky.