Elizabeth Edwards re-emerged yesterday with a strong plea to not let Americans' concern about their health care get buried in the avalanche of other grim economic news. "I'm more discouraged than I was before," she said.

Edwards, who had been low-profile for obvious reasons for the past month, spoke about health care at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Her message was 1) we can't ignore the crisis 2) John McCain would worsen the crisis and 3) she still wishes Barack Obama had included a health insurance mandate but his plan still moves the country well ahead.

Her talk got a fair amount of news coverage but we were pretty surprised at a two-minute CBS piece (below) which devoted half the time to rehashing the John Edwards affair scandal, and played up Elizabeth Edwards' primary season policy differences with Obama, and didn't report anything on her views of McCain's health care.

Well, we have heard Edwards speak several times in the last few months, at the Center for American Progress and at the Association for Health Care Journalists, and there isn't any doubt that she'll take Barack Obama's health plan over John McCain's any day. As she has pointed out in her speeches and her CAP blog posts (here, here and here) while McCain lambasts government-financed health care, he's had it most of his life as a child of an admiral, a Naval officer, a member of Congress, a veteran, and now as a senior eligible for Medicare. (And she's stated clearly that her critique by no means denigrates the injuries, torture and health horrors McCain endured in Hanoi). She's also pointed out how hard it would be for her, a breast cancer patient, or McCain, who has had skin cancer, to buy insurance in the private market that McCain envisions.

Edwards is scheduled to testify later this week at the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's health reform hearing. Stay tuned.