Kucinich on hc legislation: "Any kind of a solution within the current framework is bound to fail"

[t0dd]

In a letter to the Congress yesterday, President Obama wrote this:

“We all believe that reform must be built around our existing private health insurance system.”

No we don’t.

Take Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).

Kucinich doesn’t agree that reform must be built around private health insurance corporations.

Kucinich took to the C-Span airwaves to make the point this morning.

http://cspan.org/Watch/Media/2010/03/03/HP/A/30248/Rep+Dennis+Kucinich+DOH.aspx

“I don’t agree with that,” Kucinich said about Obama’s statement. “The existing private insurance system is designed to create huge profits for health insurance companies at the expense of their subscribers. I emphatically disagree with that approach.”

Kucinich wants to put the private insurance corporations out of their misery and replace them with one public insurance pool – a single payer system.

“I don’t have a voice in the negotiations,” Kucinich said. “The American people don’t have a voice.”

“I’m not a rubber stamp for my party,” Kucinich said.

“The American people are saying – don’t try to force something down our throats,” Kucinich said. “Any kind of a solution within the current framework is bound to fail. The insurance companies are responsible to their shareholders.”

Kucinich was asked whether he was concerned that this whole health care overhaul could be scrapped?

“I don’t want to be part of locking in a privatization process without any controls over premiums. It’s just flawed.”

“Do we have to go back to square one? In state after state, people are beginning their own initiatives for single payer. There are initiatives happening all over this country.”

“This process in our Capitol is so totally flawed that it cannot and will not succeed. But some state is going to pass single payer.”

...

A caller into C-Span – Lawson from Minneapolis – ripped into his own Congressman – Keith Ellison.

“Ellison doesn’t seem to be getting the job done for us,” Lawson said – before complimenting Kucinich for standing for single payer.

Ellison and his colleagues in the so-called Progressive Caucus – with the exception of Kucinich and Eric Massa (D-New York) – have not lifted a finger to support single payer.

“We spend twice per capita on health care than any other country,” Kucinich said. “When we wring out of the system – corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing, the cost of paperwork – we take all of those savings and put it into care for people – and it’s enough money. It isn’t that we have to have a tax increase. We just have to reallocate the funds within the system. Right now people are paying for a national standard of health care – they are just not getting it, because it’s a for profit system.”

http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=2208

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1. All they have to do is open up Medicare to anyone who wants to buy it.

There's your public option. And it's up and running already. In fact it would make Medicare stronger, by having more people paying into it. (Not to mention the fact that younger people tend to have lower medical bills). It would make Medicare stronger and more solvent, and provide a real public option alternative to the insurance company scams.

[2Design]

2. I'm reading that the doctors are not accepting any more patients

who are on medicare because they cannot afford to - this system is really screwed up - fix one thing and cause problems elsewhere and those talking heads on 24/7 are convincing idiots to believe lies.

[Lugnut]

3. Not just that.

Insurance companies would have some real competition.

[AnOhioan]

4. K&R