Why can't Kennedy's Medicare for all be the Democratic Universal Health Pl

[papau]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0112-37.htm

A Democratic Blueprint for America's Future
by US Senator Ted Kennedy
An Address by Senator Edward M. Kennedy at the National Press Club
January 12, 2005


<snip>An essential part of our progressive vision is an America where no citizen of any age fears the cost of health care, and no employer refuses to create new jobs or cuts back on current jobs because of the high cost of providing health insurance.

The answer is Medicare, whose 40th birthday we will celebrate in July. I propose that as a 40th birthday gift to the American people, we expand Medicare over the next decade to cover every citizen - from birth to the end of life.


For those who prefer private insurance, we will offer comparable coverage under the same range of private insurance plans already available to Congress. I can think of nothing more cynical or hypocritical than a Member of Congress who gives a speech denouncing health care for all, then goes to his doctor for a visit paid for by the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan.

I call this approach Medicare for All, because it will free all Americans from the fear of crippling medical expenses and enable them to seek the best possible care when illness strikes.

The battle to achieve Medicare for All will not be easy. Powerful interests will strongly oppose it, because they profit immensely from the status quo. Right wing forces will unleash false attack ads ranting against socialized medicine and government-run health care.

But those attacks are a generation out of date - retreads of the failed campaign that delayed Medicare in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, we are immunized against such attacks by the obvious success of Medicare. It is long past time to extend that success to all.

<snip>

[firefox]

1. Nominated

Here we have an example of a solution to the collapse/failure of our health care system. Present policy ignores the desire of the people for universal health care despite the examples of the rest of the western world. The question isn't who has a better health care policy than the United States. The question is what industrial nation has a worse health care policy than the United States, assuming we are still considered an industrial nation. We manufacture hamburgers so we must be an industrial nation. Sorry, I was just thinking.

[Warpy]

2. Because the New Democrats/ DLC are desperate to keep the

insurance giants running our healthcare system. They're twisting themselves into grotesque configurations trying to pretend they can "tweak" a system that has served so many of us so badly for so many years, and more and more of us not at all. They honestly think they can take an industry that devotes a great deal of administrative money toward denial of care instead of delivery of it and magically turn it into universal healthcare that will serve us all.

My gawd, what are these dreamers smoking? None of their ideas will work. The insurance industry has got to be thrown out of the healthcare business. Illness is NOT a consumer decision, and having some non medical person treat it like one and cavalierly deny care to sick people because of some actuarial table is obscene.

Hillarycare was a BAD PLAN, folks, and I'm extremely glad it never went anywhere. Medicare for all is the only medical plan with any chance of succeeding in this country, and the sooner the party conservatives realize that, the better.

[mom cat]

3. I so totaly agree with you. Too many dems are getting fat at the

lolly feeding troughs.