Kucinich: The only candidate who would fix our broken health care system

[Karmadillo]

Article does a good job of detailing just how bad the situation is. Half measures may not be the answer this time.

http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-vpcoc163496496oct16,0,4055065.column?coll=ny-health-headlines

Now that Dennis Kucinich has formally entered the presidential race - and before he fades away - comes a moment to give the Ohio congressman his due.

He is the only candidate who would really fix the country's broken health care system.

He would end the confusing, expensive, inefficient and immoral mechanism through which the world's richest nation rations care according to a person's ability to pay. He would do away with the private health insurance industry, with its contraption of copayments and deductibles that are taxes on the sick.

He would break the standoff between employers trying to stem the rapid escalation in their health insurance costs and workers trying to keep these costs from being shifted to them - a payroll tax by another name.

He would put an end to the notion that giant health care corporations answering to Wall Street investors (and Justice Department investigators) are just the medicine sick people need.

more...

[OneBlueSky]

1. I'm getting closer and closer to voting for Kucinich . . .

in the primary . . . he's the candidate most in line with my own views and, though I don't think he can be nominated or elected, I'd like him to do well to send a message that his positions have support within the party . . . in the general election, I'll vote for whoever isn't Bush . . .

[mrgorth]

3. We're not ready

for single payer. I wish we were. Go the Dean route and maybe we can slide into single payer before too long. I love Dennis but he's unelectable.

[veganwitch]

5. tell that to

the 40 million people without health insurance and the millions of others that cant afford what they have.


i dont know what else i can say without getting banned.

[mrgorth]

7. infighting

I support one of the most progressive candidates on the ballot, that wants health insurance for all and you want to swear at me? C'mon now.

[veganwitch]

9. dean is hardly progressive

but this road has been travelled already at DU and im not going down it again.

[Mairead]

11. Sorry, Dean doesn't BEGIN to be progressive

It's not progressive to keep feeding the military-industrial complex at its current INSANEly high levels. I think it's what right now, the equivalent of the next 25 largest national military budgets COMBINED?

It's not progressive to expect us to pay 88G MORE each year just to keep the hands of the wealthy elites in our pockets for healthcare, especially when 10M people would still be left out in the cold.

It's not progressive to go on sacrificing innocent lives so that a few wealthy elites can become even MORE wealthy.

If you think any of that is 'progressive', you need to unpocket for a new dictionary.

[tinanator]

8. who's "we" ?

whats that in your pocket?

-"most progressive"? can I buy you a clue?

[dweller]

20. we? why that would be mrgorth

and the little pony who showed up yesterday, espousing 'universal truths' and speaking for the majority, and revealing to the many Kucinich supporters some secretive knowledge about 'electability'...yeah, both of em.

i'm so much more edjumacated now.
:eyes:
dp

[Mairead]

10. You're willing to write off the 10M whom Dean's plan wouldn't cover?

You think we should spend 88G MORE than we're spending now?

[gully]

29. Are you willing to write off many more for ideological purity?

I imagine Dennis is.

[Mairead]

30. Perhaps you'd like to try supporting that with some facts?

I'm sure you won't, Gully, because in general you haven't, but I thought I'd ask anyhow.

[dpbrown]

14. "Not ready" is just another way to try to marginalize Dennis

I'm "not ready" to support a candidate who:

1. Isn't as strong as Dennis on the Death Penalty.
2. Isn't as strong as Dennis on Universal Single-Payer Health Care.
3. Isn't as strong as Dennis on empowering family farmers into food and energy distribution.
4. Isn't as strong as Dennis on getting out of NAFTA and the WTO.
5. Isn't as strong as Dennis on making the Pentagon accountable to taxpayers and keeping us safe.
6. Isn't as strong as Dennis on a federal law on gay unions.
7. Isn't as fiscally responsible as Dennis on funding his programs without diverting the Bush tax cut money back into what it funded before.
8. Isn't as strong as Dennis on getting the US out of Iraq and cutting Halliburton and the other war pirates off from feeding on the carcass of Iraq.
9. Isn't as strong as Dennis on getting the Social Security retirement age back to 65.

There's no reason, in my mind, to support a candidate who doesn't even pretend that there's a dream we can all share to heal the harm done by the BFEE to our country.

What we're not ready for is for a continuation of failed policies under the guise of "this is all we can hope for." I think we should all call that for what it is - a lie. We are ready for change. We are ready to take back our nation from the BFEE. We are ready to heal the damage and division the policies of Reagan, Bush, and Bush the Stunted have inflicted on us.

We are not only ready for Dennis Kucinich, we need the message, the vision, and the man - NOW.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

[twilight]

16. bullsh*t!

Dennis Kucinich is highly electable. How the hell to you think he became a Congressman? Can DEAN claim this? ANSWER: HELL NO!



Every person makes a difference! Dennis J. Kucinich for President 2004!!!!!

:dem: :kick:

[no name no slogan]

35. Tell that to 70% of the population, and 50% of Repubs!

Pew did a study on this fairly recenlty, and 70% of Americans favor a single-payer healthcare system like the one Kucinich is proposing. Interestingly enough, 50% of the Republicans surveyed ALSO favored a single-payer universal healthcare system!

America has been ready for single-payer for a LOOOONNNG time; the only problem is that most politicians don't realize it! Look at what Clinton tried to push through: the people wanted a Universal single-payer system, but he ended up championing a "managed care" system that only served the interests of the country's biggest insurance companies. THAT was the reason his plan didn't work-- most Democrats knew it was a sham, so they didn't support it, even though they still controlled Congress at the time.

[revcarol]

2. I'm shocked. $294 BILLION off the top just to manage the system??

As a Kucinich supporter, and without insurance myself, I still didn't realize the system was this bad!!

A real eye-opener.

[iverglas]

4. Keep an eye on Maine

I understand that its single-public-payer ("Canada-style") health plan comes on line in the new year.

The drug & insurance companies and HMOs pulled out all the stops to defeat the ballot question on a universal plan in California a while back. (Managed to turn it into a choice / anti-choice contest, how clever of them.) Maine seems to have slipped by under their noses.

http://www.mainepeoplesalliance.org/USPHC.htm

http://www.mainepeoplesalliance.org/ActionUpdate.htm

Uh oh, looks like it was a Green initiative:

http://www.mainegreens.org/electoral/party/monitor/fall2001/SinglePayerHealthCare.html

and the timetable just keeps getting extended. But my Maine friend tells me it's just around the corner, now.

.

[mrgorth]

6. I've lived in Maine

There's no LA, no San Diego, etc. It can slip stuff by the interests that Cali couldn't.

[Karmadillo]

32. Sure, keep slipping stuff by, but don't say we didn't warn you guys when

Maine is declared to be the newest member of the Axis of Evil.

[dpbrown]

12. Single-payer is cheaper

Small Vote for Universal Care Is Seen as Carrying a Lot of Weight

by Pam Belluck, The New York Times, November 16, 2001

(clip)

Supporters of Canada's government-administered health service say that a single-payer system would not only cover everyone, it would cost less, be more efficient, and eliminate so much paperwork that thousands of paper pushers would need to be retrained for new jobs. In their vision, the system would be financed by taxes, but would cost less than most people are now paying for health insurance.

John Dieffenbacher-Krall, co-director of the Maine People's Alliance, which backs a government- insured plan, said that proponents estimated that for 2001, based in part on studies of state health care costs, a single-payer plan would have cost $5.1 billion, while the current system will cost $5.5 billion.

"We ought to guarantee insurance for every patient, good insurance where you can choose your doctor and that's guaranteed," said Dr. Duncan Wright, an emergency room psychiatrist at the Maine Medical Center, who helped lead the campaign for the referendum.

(clip)

Article reproduced here:

http://users.rcn.com/wbumpus/sandy/seachange67.htm

[dpbrown]

13. And nonprofits kill fewer people

Lessons for health care delivery in Maine

(clip)

There are two recent scientific studies both authored by Dr. Gordon Guyatt from Hamilton, Ontario, both in highly respected Journals - The Canadian Medical Association Journal and The Journal of the American Medical Association - that show a troublesome trend for U.S. providers. These studies were performed by pooling data from many previous studies and from government statistics; hence the results are not ambiguous and, for the most part, unassailable. In the first paper, published last year, Guyatt and colleagues, after adjusting for income, education and other illnesses demonstrated that "for profit" hospitals in the United States had a 2 percent higher overall mortality rate (despite more administrators) than not-for profit institutions. That means there were two more deaths for every hundred people admitted to these hospitals compared to equivalent admissions in not-for profit hospitals. Moreover, "for profit" hospitals tended to hire less skilled personnel for direct care services, and still charged third party payors the same rate as not-for profits.

In the second study, published earlier this year in JAMA, "for-profit" renal dialysis units had an 8 percent greater death rate than not for profit units, again, adjusted carefully for level of income, education and other illnesses.

(clip)

http://www.bangornews.com/editorialnews/articles/406589_082803lessonsforhealthc_.cfm

Dennis is right. We need to help him.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

[iverglas]

24. uh oh

Some people have to be more careful with statistics.

"... 'for profit' hospitals in the United States had a 2 percent higher overall mortality rate (despite more administrators) than not-for profit institutions. That means there were two more deaths for every hundred people admitted to these hospitals compared to equivalent admissions in not-for profit hospitals."

I know it was the newspaper, not you (and not the researchers), who said it -- but you don't want to be quoting it!

If the death rate in a hospital was 1 patient for every hundred admitted, and it was 2% higher in another hospital, that would mean 1.02 patients died for every hundred admitted. Not 3 dead patients for every hundred admitted!

Two more deaths for every hundred people who died, not for every hundred people who were admitted! Yowie, that would be a slaughter; sooner or later, there'd be no one coming out at all.

;)

All the rest of it, of course, is quite true and too true.

.

[gully]

15. The problem I have with Kucinich is that he doesn't have a back up plan

He was asked about it last night in Iowa.

He has none. Single payer plans have failed 3x in recent years. Howard Dean want's to 'get it done'. Dennis wants to dream.

[Mairead]

17. What's Dean's backup plan?

Does he have one? Because if 'Mr Wonderful' couldn't get a complicated, expensive plan passed, then how can Dean?

[gully]

27. Well being Dean has passed such a plan and Republicans would

look pretty foolish declining on Deans plan, I don't see failure as an option.

Dean has a way of getting things done. Which is why he's got my vote.

[Mairead]

33. So Dean doesn't have a backup plan either. How nice.

You're speculating that, since Dean got a complex, expensive plan passed in tiny, homogenous Vermont where the legislature was actually working on doing single-payer instead (which Dean threatened to veto, if they suceeded), Dean will somehow be able to get a complex, expensive scheme passed in Congress when even Bill 'Mr Wonderful Politician' Clinton couldn't do it. You're speculating that somehow the Republicans and the insurance companies will roll over, that they won't scream 'tax and spend' even though Dean's plan gives them a perfect opening by requiring $88G more spending per year than the enormous amount we're spending today and will still leave 10M people out in the cold.

[dpbrown]

19. The problem I have with Dean is he doesn't succeed with his front-up plan

His plan leaves something like 10 million people without insurance.

To achieve that, he wants to divert the Bush tax money (money that was once funding other worthy programs) into pouring money into private health insurers pockets.

Much of this money ends up going to pay administrators.

It's been written that the private Blue Cross insurer in Maine uses more administrators to cover its rougly 2.5 million subscribers than the whole of Canada uses to cover 27 million.

Private health insurance is wasteful and inefficient, and pouring more money into a broken system doesn't make one a hero, it opens one up to being smeared by Republicans as a "tax-and-spend" Democrat.

Because Dennis' plan is not "more of the same with more money poured into it" he is uniquely positioned to combat Republican smearing on this issue.

The only thing Democrats can think of to say is "it'll never pass" without taking into account the health care crisis of ballooning costs and ballooning numbers of people uncovered that we're currently in.

Dennis Kucinich has the most fiscally responsible, economically sound plan to get coverage for 100% of the people in the nation.

No one else's plan even comes close.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

[gully]

26. Dennis Kucinich has an unrealistic plan that has failed 3X

even by "Mr. Wonderful" as some have noted.

BTW Dan, I'd like to see a link to your claims of Dean taking $$ from other programs.

BTW, Bradley had the same idea. You said you didn't like him right?

http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/09/28/president.2000/bradley.health/

I liked the Wellstone plan:

http://edition.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/07/19/wellstone.healthplan.ap/

And, here's what they did to Clinton's plan.

http://www.gargaro.com/healthcare.html

But, I guess we shouldn't be concerned because Dennis said he'll 'inspire' the Republicans. :eyes:

Sorry, didn't mean to intrude on your thread. Actually I'd love to see a single payer plan and Dean said as president he'd gladly sign one presented to him. But, I don't think it's realistic right now.

Like HD said, we've been waiting for Washington for too long, it's time to get something done NOW.

[Mairead]

34. Gully, get your facts straight, would you please?

Dennis's plan is a straightforward, non-profit, single-payer plan. Clinton's plan was not. Clinton's plan was like Dean's: a complex and expensive plan that continued the for-profit excesses that have created the morass we're in today.

[dpbrown]

37. None of those plans are Federal Single-Payer

None of the plans that you say are analagous are actually single-payer plans.

The Bradley plan isn't much different from the Dean plan, and consisted primarily of "giving" people money they could then hand over to private insurers.

The Wellstone plan's best case scenario would have resulted in "50" single-payer state plans.

And the Clinton plan was sunk by letting the private insurance companies load it with pork until it sunk.

Examining what former governor Dean "has" said about where he will find his funding for his particular version of "tax and spend" democracy, dumping money into the pockets of the already rich private insurance companies, finds that, to the extent that he intends to divert Bush tax cut money "from" what that money used to fund, to the funding of his version of making private insurers rich without achieving 100% coverage and with leaving the private insurers with the same motivation to exclude people most likely to use the insurance coverage, his plan has the effect of continued defunding of federal programs that were funded under Clinton, before the Bush tax cuts went into effect.

It ignores the obvious to believe that former governor Dean can find the money from the Bush tax cuts both to fund his initiatives and to restore funding for programs cut due to Bush-era tax cuts. Therefore, Dean is susceptible on this issue to the mantra of Republicans of being a "tax and spend" Democrat. This will hurt him in the election.

Kucinich's plan is simpler and more economically sound than any of the plans you've offered in comparison. It puts the entire population in a single pool, eliminates the wasted administrative layer, and would cost no more than what we are paying now, to cover the entire population. Kucinich is not susceptible to Republican "tax and spend" smearing on this issue, and that's one of the things that makes Kucinich's plan smarter and more competitive than Dean's, and Bradley's, and Wellstone's.

Studies also show that universal single-payer is not only more efficient (the same number of administrators it takes to run Maine's private health insurer with 2.5 million subscribers as it does for all of Canada with 25 million), not-for-profit health care saves more lives and provides better care.

I'm not ready to support a candidate for whom the only answer seems to be to pour more money into a broken system, not only because Republicans will roast him or her on this issue, but because it truly does not represent the relief we need from record numbers of uninsured, and record costs of being insured.

The health care crisis is more critical now than it arguably was when each of those three politicians offered their plan for dumping more money into private insurers' pockets - and that's one of the things that makes Dean's similar plan the wrong plan at the wrong time. I think the nation is much more painfully aware of the problems that will continue if we keep on the same path, and so therefore I'm very supportive of a candidate who actually offers something different from the "status quo with more money thrown at it."

Unfortunately, all four of those plans represented versions of that same theme - the status quo with more money thrown at it.

It's time to do the right thing for the nation, and right now, candidate Kucinich is the only one with a plan that does that.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

[no name no slogan]

36. Name those three plans that have failed

And no, Clinton's plan does not count, as it was not single-payer, but "managed competition" between four or five big insurance companies (kind of like what Dean supports-- how scary!)

[Terwilliger]

18. Oh no! Oh no!! He's trying to take the profit out of healtcare!!!

Damn quasi-communist pinko!!! :eyes:

[mrgorth]

21. And to think

for 2 seconds that I had found a forum where I wouldn't be scolded as a liberal communist! You people are the problem. Look, I like Dennis. I support single payer health care. I'm very sorry that I don't think he can beat Bush or that he could get single payer through the congress but I don't and right now I just want Bush out. I've noticed there's a thread on here about whether or not Dean's supporters will support the nominee if it's not him and most seem to agree. I suppose someone should throw up a thread about whether Kucinich's supporters will support the nominee or vote for Dennis/Nader or anyone else the Greens happen to put up.

[revcarol]

22. I'm sure some one will refer you to those threads that wish to divide.

(Computer illiterate here.)

[Mairead]

23. *We're* the problem? I don't think so!

Explain it to us, would you? Why, since it takes exactly the same number of votes to elect someone who will strive to make most of the changes we need, why should we spend our votes electing someone who stands for business as usual? Someone who stands for continuing to fund the war industry at its insanely high levels, someone who stands for giving even MORE money to the owners of insurance companies while still leaving 10M people uninsured, someone who stands for continuing to sacrifice lives for oil, someone who stands for giving Sharon's Apartheid program even more money than they wanted, someone who stands for continuing the insanity of the drugs war with its killings, subversions, and imprisonments.

Explain it to us. But facts only, please, no mere opinionated assertions or unsupportable prognostications.

[mrgorth]

25. No problemo...

BTW, I love your name. If we had a girl I wanted Mairead for a name. Anyway, if you want to vote for Dennis in the primary, go ahead, I salute you. This will be about the 3rd time I've said I like him and would like single-payer. I was flamed for saying I support Dean for whatever reasons. I'm not saying you're (collectively) the problem for supporting Kucinich or even not liking Dean. It's the divisiveness. I can't believe that we (incuding myself) are so angry that we flame the hell out of each other too. Goddamn!

[JohnKleeb]

38. excuse fucking me

Ok we heard this nonsense so many times, "I like Dennis but he cant win" etc and etc you realize if people hear this so many damned times we are gonna get pissed and fight, btw we arent all greens, I will support the nominee and I hope the others will but the point is that me and other Kucinich supporters are constantly told that, fight for what you believe in, dont fucking generalize us, ok. I hope people stop letting fear get to them. Unelectablity isnt proven, unelectablity is unproven for all of these candiates. I am sorry if I reacted the way I do but damnit if you see what I see, it breaks my heart to see this is what people are doing, sigh I am sorry that you got attacked but I think I am correct in saying that this cliche "I love Dennis but he's unelectable" is so annoying to us. BTW Kucinich is a democrat who gets along with many green members and democrats alike.

[Nederland]

39. Question

Let's take Kucinich out of the equation for a moment a talk in the abstract. I say this because from past threads its clear that you have a kneejerk tendency to defend DK. BTW, that's fine, its good that we have people that are passionate about their candidate.

If you were looking at Candidate X and were trying to determine whether or not s/he was 'electable' what process would you undertake? Wouldn't it make sense to take a survey of that person's positions and them compare them to the positions of the voters?

[gully]

28. What about Carol Mosely Braun?

She is also for a single payer plan.

[Zorra]

31. "before he fades away"

We simply can't let this happen. Dennis will not only fight to take the healthcare system out of corporate control, but the government itself. Kucinich is our only real chance at reversing the corporate fascist takeover of the US. FDR was not joking when he said this:

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."FDR

Check out this excerpt, and the statements made recently by a UN expert, and weigh it with the statement made by FDR:

Mr. Ziegler says "the growing power of transnational corporations and their extension of power through privatization, deregulation and the rolling back of the State also mean that it is now time to develop binding legal norms that hold corporations to human rights standards and circumscribe potential abuses of their position of power."

Noting that transnational corporations are often many times bigger than some of the countries in which they operate, and that they "are still rarely under scrutiny for their respect of human rights," Mr. Ziegler concludes, "it is therefore vital to strengthen monitoring mechanisms."

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=8536&Cr=right&Cr1=food

We need to elect DK not only because of his proposed solution for the Healthcare mess, but for his solution to our biggest problem -- neutralizing fascism by limiting corporate power. The power of transnational corporations is, as FDR said, "the essence of fascism".