Dennis Kucinich, one of the only remaining, if not the last, honest congressmen. I wish he was my congressman. I stand by his decision 100%.
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(November 7, 2009)

Congressman Dennis Kucinich after voting against H.R. 3962 addresses why he voted NO, stating:

"We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system."

"Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick."

"But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies - a bailout under a blue cross."

"By incurring only a new requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, a weakened public option, and a few other important but limited concessions, the health insurance companies are getting quite a deal. The Center for American Progress’ blog, Think Progress, states, ’since the President signaled that he is backing away from the public option, health insurance stocks have been on the rise.’ Similarly, healthcare stocks rallied when Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill without a public option. Bloomberg reports that Curtis Lane, a prominent health industry investor, predicted a few weeks ago that ’money will start flowing in again’ to health insurance stocks after passage of the legislation. Investors.com last month reported that pharmacy benefit managers share prices are hitting all-time highs, with the only industry worry that the Administration would reverse its decision not to negotiate Medicare Part D drug prices, leaving in place a Bush Administration policy."

"During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The ’robust public option’ which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies."

"Recent rises in unemployment indicate a widening separation between the finance economy and the real economy. The finance economy considers the health of Wall Street, rising corporate profits, and banks’ hoarding of cash, much of it from taxpayers, as sign of an economic recovery. However in the real economy - in which most Americans live - the recession is not over. Rising unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures are still hammering Main Street."

"This health care bill continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of America’s manufacturing and service economies which suffer from costs other countries do not have to bear, especially the cost of health care. America continues to stand out among all industrialized nations for its privatized health care system. As a result, we are less competitive in steel, automotive, aerospace and shipping while other countries subsidize their exports in these areas through socializing the cost of health care."

"Notwithstanding the fate of H.R. 3962, America will someday come to recognize the broad social and economic benefits of a not-for-profit, single-payer health care system, which is good for the American people and good for America’s businesses, with of course the notable exceptions being insurance and pharmaceuticals."

Kucinich misses the point. Regardless of wether or not universal coverage benefits the economy and business competition, it should be implemented because it is the morally RIGHT thing to do. No one should be denied access to medical assistance, period.

Smash Heaven wrote:
Kucinich misses the point. Regardless of wether or not universal coverage benefits the economy and business competition, it should be implemented because it is the morally RIGHT thing to do. No one should be denied access to medical assistance, period.

I agree. But don’t bet for a minute that healthcare insurance companies won’t find a loophole to deny people the coverage they need. And the way it’s looking, if the bill even passes the senate (unlikely the way it’s going right now), it will be so watered down and slanted in favor of the healthcare "industry", that we may almost be better off to leave things as they are, and that really sucks.

One more thing, the bill passed last night would not go into effect until ’13. 44, 000 people dies each year because they don’t have coverage. That’s at least 132, 000 people who will die before implementation.

Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

Daev Surfzombo von Halfhed, the King of Kooks wrote:

I agree. But don’t bet for a minute that healthcare insurance companies won’t find a loophole to deny people the coverage they need.

Then we go back and plug the hole.

This thing was never going to be perfect from the beginning.
More important to start the ball rolling then fix what needs fixing.

David ≠ wrote:

Daev Surfzombo von Halfhed, the King of Kooks wrote:



I agree. But don’t bet for a minute that healthcare insurance companies won’t find a loophole to deny people the coverage they need.

Then we go back and plug the hole.



This thing was never going to be perfect from the beginning.

More important to start the ball rolling then fix what needs fixing.

Exactly, it’s not gonna be fool proof from the jump. Nothing really is, especially in it’s infancy. Most bills/laws/amendments end up being revised at some point I’d wager.

Smash Heaven wrote:
Kucinich misses the point. Regardless of wether or not universal coverage benefits the economy and business competition, it should be implemented because it is the morally RIGHT thing to do. No one should be denied access to medical assistance, period.

Nobody is denied access to medical assistance, ever. It’s illegal. The question is the affordability thereof, and the debt that is often sunk into the pockets of the lower-classes.

Kia wrote:

David ≠ wrote:

Daev Surfzombo von Halfhed, the King of Kooks wrote:





I agree. But don’t bet for a minute that healthcare insurance companies won’t find a loophole to deny people the coverage they need.

Then we go back and plug the hole.





This thing was never going to be perfect from the beginning.


More important to start the ball rolling then fix what needs fixing.

Exactly, it’s not gonna be fool proof from the jump. Nothing really is, especially in it’s infancy. Most bills/laws/amendments end up being revised at some point I’d wager.

It has to be full proof if President Obama is behind it the bill must be perfect soon as it hits the floor because it has to start working tommorrow (sarcasm) ;)

David ≠ wrote:

More important to start the ball rolling then fix what needs fixing.

Good luck with that. It’s already being considered dead in the Senate.

The “transparent government” that President Obama guaranteed during his electoral campaign has become yet another broken promise. On August 14, the Huffington Post revealed a memo containing details of “the deal” that Obama cut with health care mega-corporations in secret White House meetings. And although the White House denies the authenticity of the memo, the details are consistent with earlier reports from other national media outlets.

The White House deal essentially reduces some of the more egregious health care corporation swindling — estimated to save $80 billion over ten years — while Obama shamelessly promised that other irrational vehicles for health care mega-profits will remain untouched: any congressional health care plan will not attempt to negotiate for cheaper drugs, nor import them from other countries, Medicare will not be altered in a way that affects health care corporations’ profits.

Creating new laws by backroom dealing with giant corporations is, of course, bad for democracy. Unfortunately, Obama had few other options, since he refused beforehand to directly confront the health care industry’s power. He was thus reduced to bargaining with these entities, leaving any leverage at the door. The health care companies fully understood this and exploited the situation to the fullest.

The competing health care bills in Congress reflect this dynamic, since Congressmen have been similarly awed — and bought — by the health care industry. The different health care bills all agree that health care should be “mandated” — like the car insurance you’re required to buy (if you can afford it). All the bills also agree that Medicare payments to hospitals and other providers — many directly affecting the most vulnerable — will be cut drastically, leading to “…savings [that] would pay nearly 40 percent of the [health care] bills’ cost.” (New York Times, August 9, 2009). They’re giving health care with the left hand and taking it with the right.

One disagreement between the competing plans was the highly controversial “public option.” This was what the health care corporations hated most, since it was a way to directly take power out of their hands. Again, the White House backed off, “signal[ing] Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate.” (New York Times, August 16, 2009). The “cooperative” idea is widely considered by health care advocates to be useless.

Such sellouts were the inevitable result of intensified health care industry bribery (so-called “lobbying”), which Business Week claims to be “… a record $133 million…in the second quarter of 2009 alone…” (August 6, 2009). The same article — appropriately named The Health Insurers Have Already Won — examines the health care lobby’s successes and notes that no matter what health care bill emerges from Congress, the “insurance industry will emerge more profitable.”

The same article also reveals — unsurprisingly — that health care corporations were responsible for destroying the public health care option, while “also achieving a secondary aim of constraining the new benefits that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured. That will make the new customers more lucrative to the industry.” This simply means that the taxpayer money that will be used to subsidize any health care plan will go straight towards health care company profits, while providing the same shoddy care they’ve always provided.

Heads they win, tails we lose.

The health care industry is so pleased with the deal they’ve struck with Obama, they’re willing to put up $150 million toward an advertising campaign to insure the deal’s passage.

This servitude to the health care corporations has strongly emboldened the rightwing, who are using the Democrat’s obvious corruption to stir up hysteria and fanaticism through media and town halls. The rightwing attacks have driven many liberals to defend the Democrats who deserve zero pity, let alone support.

The Republicans are placing safe bets that the Democrats will achieve absolutely nothing progressive in health care — a gamble that will payoff tremendously in the next elections. The Republicans are also using the situation to massively propagandize against “socialism, ” a word wrongly attributed to any health care bill in Congress. The purpose, however, is to steer people away from any substitute to capitalism, a system that millions of Americans rightfully see as broken as health care.

The rightwing is also using the health care crisis to again focus its guns on immigrants. Instead of the giant health care corporations being responsible for the health care crisis, society’s most vulnerable are painted as the culprits. The Wall Street Journal complained that health care costs are being driven up due to “half of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. don’t have health insurance”. (August 15, 2009).

Of course the 6 million undocumented immigrants who lack health insurance have plenty of company: there are at least 47 million U.S. citizens without health insurance, a number that is growing drastically as unemployment skyrockets.

The same Wall Street journal article implies that anyone seeking emergency room help should be turned away unless they show proof of citizenship. Leaving aside the obvious moral issues of denying a human being emergency room medical treatment, another issue remains: millions of working and poor people do not have any “proof of citizenship, ” and would also be denied lifesaving emergency health care.

The Wall Street Journal would never focus on the fact that a large number of African Americans likewise use the emergency room for their primary source of medical treatment, since such a statement would be obviously racist, while racism against immigrants is widely accepted. Whipping up racist hysteria, however, is a tactic that is being employed on a broader basis as people rightfully blame mega-corporations for the economic crisis.

Another issue blamed on immigrants is Medicare’s economic woes, while the real perpetrators — the health care corporations — escape responsibility. Every time Medicare is used to purchase overpriced medications, the pharmaceutical companies rake in huge profits. Medicare must also pay for overpriced medical procedures, pricey hospital stays, etc. In fact, Medicare Part D was specially inserted by the Bush administration to drive up profits for the health care industry. In Part D’s first six months, profits for pharmaceutical companies went up $8 billion, according to the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform. Part of Obama’s deal with the health care industry says that Part D will remain untouched.

This fiscal ransacking of Medicare is being used as a reason to dump the program in its entirety, something that the Democrat’s “health care plan” will be the first step towards achieving. (The most profitable parts will likely remain intact.)

Medicare must not only be saved, but extended to everybody. This obvious solution to America’s health care disaster is “too radical” for Democrats and Republicans alike. Indeed, under the current system far too many of society’s resources are being used towards the profits of the health care industry, bank bailouts, and foreign wars for such truly universal health care to exist.

To create health care for all, the socially precious health care industry must be completely taken out of the hands of the mega-corporations who’ve ruined the lives of millions of people — indeed directly responsible for the deaths of a staggering number of lives — while helping bankrupt federal and state governments.

In an earlier article we wrote: “If Obama’s health care plan leaves in place the same greedy shareholders and CEO’s of the health care mega-corporations, while funneling them billions of taxpayer money, very little is likely to change. Likewise, if every American has health insurance, but insurance companies benefit from not paying for expensive surgeries or medications, or drug companies continue to benefit from having monopolies over medications, millions of people will continue to suffer.” (March, 9, 2009, The Emerging Health Care Sellout).

Obstacles to change must be removed, not bargained with or pandered to. The health care industry — like the big banks — is exerting a stranglehold over society that the Democrats and Republicans are unwilling to break, and indeed profit from. This cowardice will hopefully shed light on an old truth for millions of people: the Democrats — like the Republicans — are a party of big business and cannot be anything different. Workers must make a decisive break with the Democrats and politically organize themselves independently, so that another hope-wielding politician doesn’t waste our time with promises of change while delivering health care profits, bank bailouts and wars.

Jon (SPILD - NY) wrote:

Smash Heaven wrote:

Kucinich misses the point. Regardless of wether or not universal coverage benefits the economy and business competition, it should be implemented because it is the morally RIGHT thing to do. No one should be denied access to medical assistance, period.

Nobody is denied access to medical assistance, ever. It’s illegal. The question is the affordability thereof, and the debt that is often sunk into the pockets of the lower-classes.

if you can’t afford healthcare then isn’t that the same as being denied access to it?

if your insurance denies medical coverage (or a loan) for an operation or surgery that could cost your life because of a pre-existing conditions then isn’t that the same as being denied access?

once your dead, you can’t pay off your debts, can you now?

Jon (SPILD - NY) wrote:

Smash Heaven wrote:

Kucinich misses the point. Regardless of wether or not universal coverage benefits the economy and business competition, it should be implemented because it is the morally RIGHT thing to do. No one should be denied access to medical assistance, period.

Nobody is denied access to medical assistance, ever. It’s illegal. The question is the affordability thereof, and the debt that is often sunk into the pockets of the lower-classes.

Jon that is disingenuous. No one is denied access to life saving health care ie: car accident. However you get into long term treatment management or care thats a whole different ball game ex: diabetes, cancer, etc. And everyday care like going to the doctor for routine vag exam, breast screening, prostate check, an upper respiratory infection, etc - forget it. If you dont have the money to see a doc you are stuck. If you are in misery and pain and your mouth is infected from a bad tooth and you dont have the money then oh well.

Hemingway wrote:

Jon (SPILD - NY) wrote:

Smash Heaven wrote:


Kucinich misses the point. Regardless of wether or not universal coverage benefits the economy and business competition, it should be implemented because it is the morally RIGHT thing to do. No one should be denied access to medical assistance, period.

Nobody is denied access to medical assistance, ever. It’s illegal. The question is the affordability thereof, and the debt that is often sunk into the pockets of the lower-classes.

Jon that is disingenuous. No one is denied access to life saving health care ie: car accident. However you get into long term treatment management or care thats a whole different ball game ex: diabetes, cancer, etc. And everyday care like going to the doctor for routine vag exam, breast screening, prostate check, an upper respiratory infection, etc - forget it. If you dont have the money to see a doc you are stuck. If you are in misery and pain and your mouth is infected from a bad tooth and you dont have the money then oh well.

You’re right, but that’s technically a different type of medical care. I agree with you. I’m just playing with ideas in my head right now about how best to get there.

Smash Heaven wrote:
if you can’t afford healthcare then isn’t that the same as being denied access to it?



if your insurance denies medical coverage (or a loan) for an operation or surgery that could cost your life because of a pre-existing conditions then isn’t that the same as being denied access?



once your dead, you can’t pay off your debts, can you now?

A hospital can’t deny you life and death treatment. Read Hemi’s post for what not having health-insurance prevents.

Jon (SPILD - NY) wrote:

Hemingway wrote:

Jon (SPILD - NY) wrote:

Smash Heaven wrote:



Kucinich misses the point. Regardless of wether or not universal coverage benefits the economy and business competition, it should be implemented because it is the morally RIGHT thing to do. No one should be denied access to medical assistance, period.

Nobody is denied access to medical assistance, ever. It’s illegal. The question is the affordability thereof, and the debt that is often sunk into the pockets of the lower-classes.

Jon that is disingenuous. No one is denied access to life saving health care ie: car accident. However you get into long term treatment management or care thats a whole different ball game ex: diabetes, cancer, etc. And everyday care like going to the doctor for routine vag exam, breast screening, prostate check, an upper respiratory infection, etc - forget it. If you dont have the money to see a doc you are stuck. If you are in misery and pain and your mouth is infected from a bad tooth and you dont have the money then oh well.

You’re right, but that’s technically a different type of medical care. I agree with you. I’m just playing with ideas in my head right now about how best to get there.

technical shmechnical. Look if you have a person with diabetes, hypertension, some kind of heart condition, cancer, or whatever and you can’t afford health care or the medicine then it directly leads to a life saving crisis event. The end is ultimately the same, the route taken is by ambulance, so really its not different.

AND if its something like getting a new heart, or bone marrow transplant or such that can save your life, if the insurance turns you down then thats the end of the road for you, so even saying that you can’t be turned down for a life saving crisis still doesn’t hold up.

Smash Heaven wrote:
Kucinich misses the point. Regardless of wether or not universal coverage benefits the economy and business competition, it should be implemented because it is the morally RIGHT thing to do. No one should be denied access to medical assistance, period.

It’s morally wrong to take money from one segment of the population to give to another, by force. Also no one is denied medical assistance ever.

My issue with universal coverage, is why should government take this issue on when medicare is has 73 TRILLION dollars in unfunded liabilities? Medicare is bankrupt, why should I trust that this would work?

Also the criminal penalties involved with not getting coverage is ludicrous. A felony, five years in prison, and a hefty fine? Yet we shouldn’t question our overlords right?

*rolls eyes*