Newspaper logo  
 
 
Bookmark and Share
Local News & Opinion

01.26 Local Democrats Invited to Brainstorming Session on Sun., Jan. 31

Ref. : Local Newsbriefs

Travel
Books, Films, Arts & Education

02.04 'The Power of Nightmares': Underwear vs. Reason

Letters

Ref. : Letters to the editor

Open Letters:
Health & Environment

Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries

02.03 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients

01.18 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients

Media Watching

02.04 Err-America

02.03 The Right Gets Itself 'Wired'

Ref. : The Daily Howler

Legal Matters

01.25 Thinking About Fictions

01.24 US Democracy's End of the Road

01.22 Editorial: U.S. Supreme Court Nails Down the Coffin of Democracy

01.22 Security Fools

US Politics, Policy & Culture

02.09 Growing Hunger in America

02.08 The US Government has Lost its Reason for Being

02.08 Thinking About Oracles

02.06 No Direction Home: Pakistan and the Imperial Principle

02.04 Howard Zinn and the State of the Union

02.04 The US Supreme Court: Vanguard of Friendly American Fascism?

02.04 The New War Against Money

02.04 David Brooks Goes After Greedy Geezers

02.02 Obama's Budget Ducks Pentagon Cuts

02.02 Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite

02.01 Thinking About Definitives

02.01 Remembering Howard Zinn (1922 - 2010)

01.29 American History 101: We Are Devo

01.29 Obama's Outreach to Americans: Empty Rhetoric, Business As Usual

01.28 The Supreme Court's Partisanship

01.27 Freeze Frame: Flopsweat and Farce in the Hollow Halls of Power

01.25 Granny D on Campaign Finance Reform

01.25 S.C. Republican’s Plan: Starve the Poor So They’ll Stop “Breeding”

01.23 It's Time for Kucinich, Conyers, Feingold and Other `Progressives' in Congress to Take a Stand

01.21 Massachusetts' Message of Stupid

01.21 Terrorism Defined: Bill Clinton Lights Our Way to Truth

01.21 How Obama Lost His Way

01.21 Political Earthquake Rocks Massachusetts

01.20 Obama Cuts Deal that Will Reduce Social Security, Medicare and all Entitlements

01.20 Critical Mass: Dem Agenda Opens Right-Wing Doors

01.19 Outsourcing War: The Rise of Private Military Contractors

“High Crimes?”

01.25 The Silence and the Shield: Depraved Indifference to the Atrocities of Power

01.19 Dark as a Dungeon: A Brutal System Stripped Bare

Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance

02.07 AIG-Gate: The World's Greatest Insurance Heist

02.06 The Free Market Fetish

02.04 The Crisis is Not Over

02.03 States Face Worsening Recession with Health Care Funds on the Chopping Block

02.02 Rule by the Rich

01.29 The Battle of the Titans: JPMorgan vs. Goldman Sachs

01.27 State of the Union: Obama’s “Automatic IRA” Plan Could Make Bush’s Wildest Dreams Come True

01.26 Obama, Read Your Reagan on Capital Gains Taxation

01.24 Funding Public Health Care with a Publicly-Owned Bank: How Canada Did It

01.18 Thinking About Accelerants

International

02.08 Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized by American Injustic

02.07 Annals of Liberation: Obama Surge Driving Thousands From Their Homes

02.05 Human Rights Abuses in Israel and Occupied Palestine

02.03 Child Slavery in Haiti

01.30 Blood is His Argument: Tony Blair's Gentle Cuddling at Iraq "Inquiry"

01.28 Obama Ignores Key Afghan Warning

01.27 Haiti's Earthquake: Natural or Engineered

01.26 Helping Haiti’s Elders

01.26 Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs

01.25 Focus on Haiti: Washington's Militarized Takeover

01.22 The Lessons of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

01.18 Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti

We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
Google
This site Web
  Kucinich Assesses Opponents' Health Care Reform Plans
Newspaper logo

CAMPAIGN NEWS:

Kucinich Assesses Opponents' Health Care Reform Plans

Says Clinton, Obama, Edwards are "on the same page—the wrong page."

Says Kucinich: “The only thing ‘universal’ about their plans is that they universally fail to address the real reason 47 million Americans are uninsured and another 50 million are under-insured: for-profit insurance companies get rich by gouging people and by not paying for health care.”
September 18, 2007–On the issue of health care, the three leading candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination are all on the same page: the wrong page, Democratic candidate and Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich said today.

“There isn’t one iota’s difference between the plans put forward by Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and former Senator Edwards because they all keep the for-profit health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies in control of the health care system,” Kucinich said. “The only thing ‘universal’ about their plans is that they universally fail to address the real reason 47 million Americans are uninsured and another 50 million are under-insured: for-profit insurance companies get rich by gouging people and by not paying for health care.”

Kucinich is the co-author and co-sponsor of a bill (HR 676) that would establish a national, not-for-profit health insurance system that would guarantee coverage to all Americans, including medical, dental, vision, mental health, long term care, early child care, and preventative health services. Under the Kucinich plan, there would be no premiums, no deductibles, and no co-pays, and no denials of services. The legislation has been endorsed by the 14,000-member Physicians for a National Health Program, the California Nurses Association, labor union locals, and award-winning film-maker Michael Moore, whose “SiCKO” documentary is a scathing indictment of the for-profit health care industry in the U.S.

The Clinton, Obama, and Edwards plans, Kucinich charges, "will ensure that for-profit companies remain in control....instead of gouging the consumers, they’ll be gouging the taxpayers.”
“If you don’t have the courage to take on the insurance and pharmaceutical industries,” Kucinich said of the other Democratic candidates, “don’t try to fool the American people by pretending to offer real reform. The Clinton, Obama, and Edwards plans will ensure that for-profit companies remain in control, and they will be rewarded and enriched with federal subsidies to reduce the prices they charge. Instead of gouging the consumers, they’ll be gouging the taxpayers.”

Kucinich also objected to the “mandates” proposed in the three plans. “These candidates want to force individual citizens and employers to buy health insurance, using the promise of tax credits to make the coercion more palatable. We shouldn’t be mandating that people buy private coverage, we should be guaranteeing coverage for our citizens like other enlightened industrialized nations do.”

"We shouldn’t be mandating that people buy private coverage," says Kuchinich. "We should be guaranteeing coverage for our citizens like other enlightened industrialized nations do.”
Kucinich noted that Americans spend more than $2 trillion a year on health care, and upwards of $600 billion covers costs that have nothing to do with care: profits, dividends, exorbitant salaries, executive compensation, stock options, advertising, paperwork, and coordination and duplication of services among the many private companies.

“Take that money out of the pockets of the for-profit companies and put it into providing a national health care plan that covers everyone for everything,” Kucinich said. Comparing and contrasting the differences among the Cinton, Obama, and Edwards plans “is a phony debate,” he charged. “If they’re afraid of offending their campaign contributors from the for-profit health care industry, or they’re concerned about whatever personal investments they have in that industry, they should be honest about it and just say so.”

He continued, “I can’t be bought, and I can’t be bossed, and that’s why I’m the only candidate willing and eager to challenge the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. The sooner we get the profit out of the system, the sooner every American can have access to comprehensive health care. It’s a right, and this nation has a moral and social responsibility to provide it.”




Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.

Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.

This story was published on September 18, 2007.
 

Public Service Ads:
Verifiable Voting in Maryland