Kucinich: Take the Profit out of Health Care [View All]

[WilliamPitt]

http://www.kucinich.us/pressreleases/pr_020604a.php

Kucinich: Take the Profit out of Health Care
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 6, 2004

Contact: William Rivers Pitt, [phone], cell [phone], fax [phone], [e-mail]

A high-ranking member of the House of Representatives announced Tuesday that he would step down from his influential chairmanship position. The Representative's decision came after the advocacy group Common Cause castigated him for seeking a $2 million-a-year lobbying job offer from the pharmaceutical industry while still holding his chairmanship, a clear conflict of interest.

According to Common Cause, the job offer from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) came shortly after the Representative helped negotiate a $540 billion Medicare prescription drug bill. This bill was widely seen as a windfall for pharmaceutical companies, which stand to make billions of dollars in profits while avoiding government price restrictions.

This is what happens when health care in America is allowed to be a for-profit industry. This Representative crafted legislation which gives billions in profits to corporations at the expense of the American people. He then deemed it appropriate to entertain multimillion dollar job offers from the pharmaceutical industry while still standing as an influential chairman.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich intends to change the American health care industry into a non-profit system where such abuses will be a thing of the past.

"Non-profit national health insurance will actually decrease total health care spending while providing more treatment and services," says Kucinich, "through reductions in bureaucracy and cost-cutting measures such as bulk purchasing of prescriptions drugs. A study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Public Citizen found that health care bureaucracy last year cost the United States $399.4 billion. The study estimates that national health insurance could save at least $286 billion annually on paperwork, enough to cover all of the uninsured and to provide full prescription drug coverage for everyone in the United States."

"Funding for my health plan will come primarily from existing government health care spending (more than $1 trillion) and a phased-in tax on employers of 7.7 percent (almost $1 trillion)," continues Kucinich. "Employers who provide coverage are already paying 8.5 percent on average. That would raise about $920 billion. In addition to that, there's already over a trillion dollars being spent a year in local, state and federal dollars for health care. The American people are already paying for universal health care, they're just not getting it."

"It is time to take the profit out of health care coverage, time to provide for the American people, not for the insurance companies," says Kucinich. "I am not running for insurance salesman in chief."

For more information on Congressman Kucinich's health care plan, go to: http://www.kucinich.us/issues/universalhealth.php.
For more campaign information: http://www.kucinich.us