Kerry in the Boston Globe: “If Congress Won’t Fix Healthcare"...

[kerrygoddess]

John Kerry: “If Congress Won’t Fix Healthcare, Then Americans Will Fix Congress”
July 31st, 2006 @ 12:58 am

John Kerry will deliver a speech today at noon at Faneuil Hall in Boston on healthcare. The speech will lay out Kerry’s comprehensive healthcare plan, a plan that Congress and the current administration had better get on board with, because American’s are wise to the fact that the healthcare crisis has “gotten worse” under the Bush administration and the Republican leadership.

It’s time for a new direction, it’s time we start “Getting moving on healthcare,” because we’re “stuck with a 20th- century healthcare system that just doesn’t work for a 21st- century economy.”

The truth is, the healthcare crisis “affects all of us.” Not just the single mothers struggling on a limited a income, not just the elderly on Medicare, now waking up to the fact that the Bush administration lied about the Medicare Drug Plan. We’re all in this boat togther. This healthcare crisis directly effects the economy. It directly affects the bottomline for businesses, big and small. It directly affect the health of all of our children — “It matters if the kid down the block isn’t immunized.”

It’s time to make healthcare an issue at the polls this fall. “Americans have a choice,” John Kerry says in an OP/ED in the Boston Globe today, “If Congress won’t fix healthcare, then Americans will fix Congress.”

MORE & LINKS - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=3757

[The Sushi Bandit]

1. Dennis Kucinich on National Health Care

Dennis already has a plan... Kerry needs to adopt it!!

National Health Care
Dennis Kucinich speaking from the Floor of the House

Link to this entry in the Congressional Record
Jul 12, 2006

"Mr. Speaker, at least 30% of the $3.2 trillion spent annually for health care in the United States goes to the for-profit system, while 50 million Americans, many of them working, are without health insurance. About $660 billion goes for corporate profits, executive salaries, stock options, advertising, marketing, and the cost of paperwork.

"If we took all that money and we put it into a public health system, a national health care plan, we would have enough money to cover everything for everyone, all medically necessary care, including dental care, vision care, mental health care, prescription drugs, and long-term care.

"Health care is a big money-maker for corporate America, however, and people we know can't afford necessary health care, because premiums, co-pays, and deductibles keep going up. About half of the bankruptcies in America are health-care related.

"It is time for this country to break free of the shackles of the insurance companies, and we can do that by Members of Congress supporting H.R. 676, the Conyers-Kucinich-McDermott bill, which calls for a universal health care plan where all people are covered and, finally, we meet the moral challenge that this country has of providing health care for all."

[politicasista]

14. Heard he listens to other ideas from other dems

So maybe he'll take that into consideration. :shrug:

[TayTay]

17. I like Kerry's plan better

I think Kuchinich should adopt his.

[politicasista]

19. Went back and re-read the plan

I think Dems should run with it especially in the 06 elections.

[The Sushi Bandit]

21. How can you justify that?

what could be better than single payer for all??!!

[TayTay]

24. A plan that might actually pass the Congress

and actually do some good. Single payer is not going to pass. Kerry's plan would help millions of people and it could actually pass.

Not a hard decision.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

18. I'm disappointed to hear this from someone I thought highly of.

"Mr. Speaker, at least 30% of the $3.2 trillion spent annually for health care in the United States goes to the for-profit system, while 50 million Americans, many of them working, are without health insurance. About $660 billion goes for corporate profits, executive salaries, stock options, advertising, marketing, and the cost of paperwork."

"If we took all that money and we put it into a public health system, a national health care plan, we would have enough money to cover everything for everyone, all medically necessary care, including dental care, vision care, mental health care, prescription drugs, and long-term care."


If Mr Kuchinich really believes you can just "take all that money"; that the amount of money being spent on healthcare is constant and it's simply a matter of finding the most efficient way to spend it; then he's not merely ignorant but incredibly ignorant of economics. If he doesn't, then he's deliberately trying to mislead. Neither possibility reflects well on him.


His basic proposal may well be good, but trying to sell it like this he does both himself and it no favours.

[The Sushi Bandit]

22. His plan is based on the BEST of european and canadian healthcare

time we start NATIONALIZING some companies.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

23. Those to statements don't go together.

The NHS here in Britain was achieved completely without compulsion.

Compulsory nationalisation of companies in the US would be electoral suicide, and an economic calamity even if it did happen.

If you want a national health service, you need to finance it out of general taxation and either set it up in parallel with the private providers or buy them into it at a price they consent to, not simply conscript them.

[The Sushi Bandit]

25. I lived in England too

but i said the best of "European" that includes Norway and Sweden who have excellent rograms

[ixion]

2. yeah, it's important to discuss healthcare when we're encouraging

atrocities be committed with our weaponry. :eyes: :sarcasm:

[flpoljunkie]

3. What works is Medicare. We need Medicare for all as Kennnedy proposes...

Why not have Medicare for all, and not the patchwork that we have and that Kerry evidently proposes to subsidize and maintain?

This criticism also goes for the bill Russ Feingold introduced last week in the Senate, his State-Based Health Care Reform Act, a pilot project for several states to help them achieve universal health insurance coverage in their states.

We will never have affordable health insurance without single payer. It ain't gonna happen. Ted Kennedy understands and supports this. Do we have no other Democrats with the guts to join him and do what is right for the American people and for our economy? We spend more than any other country in the world and get less health care per capita--truly shameful!

[Donna Zen]

4. Do we have Democrats?

Wes Clark supports single payer health care, as he has said in several speeches.

[flpoljunkie]

5. Then he has changed his mind since September, 2003? Perhaps, so.

Does not support single-payer healthcare

When an audience member shouted out "single payer!" Clark made it clear he would not advocate that form of health care system. Source: Johanna Weiss, Boston Globe, p. A3 Sep 20, 2003

http://www.issues2000.org/2004/Wesley_Clark_Health_Care.htm

-In health care, we need to take better advantage of modern technology to practice evidence-based medicine, in which treatments and practices are based on statistically proven results -- not commercial advertising -- and doctors and hospitals are held accountable for their performance, not just by the threat of malpractice but by the day-to-day quality of their results. ......
.......And inevitably this will mean transitioning over time from a work place centered, private payer system toward greater reliance on some form of single-payer system to ease administrative burdens and reduce costs.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/31/11153/0186

[blm]

6. Most Dems WANT universal health care, but only see it happening in STEPS

So - determine who is right. Is the person who proposes full universal healthcare for all NOW right, or is the person who proposes it one major step at a time right?

And bear in mind that this is a GOP house and senate.

It's a great goal to WANT universal healthcare - getting to that point is the key and major steps towards it should not be denigrated or ignored.

[Mass]

16. single payer and universal healthcare are not necessarily the same

thing.

I have no idea of what Clark is proposing. I have not seen any speech talking about that, so may be a Clark's supporter can post that, but the point is that single payer is just one form of insurance that does not necessarily implies universal healthcare and you can achieve universal healthcare without single payer (see MA.).

Actually, insurance companies like universal healthcare as long as it does not imply single payer because they can define the program they want and offer bad deals (it is one of the problems of the MA bill. Nobody says what the insurance contracts for $200 or $300 will cover. They may have huge deductibles that will not help lower middle class income people at all). What they do not want is a insurance system that would be defined by the govt with different level of coverage.

[kerrygoddess]

7. Have you ever been on Medicare?

Currently the Medicare system is set up to have different rules and qualifications across the country. Ask anyone who has been on it - it does work - it's better than nothing and Dr's find it harder to deal with than insurance companies.

From what I have heard Kerry's plan is based on his plan during the 04 election which was rated the best plan out of all of the primary candidates. It's still the best and most comprehensive plan.

Why not wait him to explain it before jumping to conclusions?

[flpoljunkie]

8. No. Are you against a single payer plan for all? As to why more D's don't

support a single payer plan, perhaps this may the biggest "contributing" factor: CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/sectors.asp?cycle=2004

THE BIG PICTURE: TOTALS BY SECTOR for 2004

Finance/Insur/RealEst

$334,786,787

41% to Democrats

59% to Republicans

[kerrygoddess]

10. No - I'm not against single payer

But I do have first hand knowledge of how the Medicare system fails people over and over again. We need more than that and better than that.

[flpoljunkie]

12. Medicare works well, and any part of it that doesn't, can surely be fixed.

As I said before, we pay more than any other country in the world for health care and we get less health care for our money--let alone the over 45 million who are uninsured.

[MH1]

13. AND - Doctor's fees for Medicare patients are subsidized by the uninsured

If everyone received Medicare, the fee structure would have to be changed to allow the doctor a reasonable income.

I am speaking based on the POV of a family care practitioner I know well. This situation may not be true for specialists, but I don't know why it wouldn't be.

[Major Hogwash]

20. Keep going strong kerrygoddess.

Ignore the rabbel rousers and keep your eye on the prize!

Damn, your good!

[politicasista]

26. I second that!

She is good. :hi:

[Mass]

15. I agree - It is urgent to start talking about a single-payer system.

What Kerry and Feingold proposed is probably the best that can be done without going there, but we need a serious discussion about single payer health insurance which allows a better negotiation and planification of the needs, as it exists in most other countries with equivalent needs.

The other reason why we need a single-payer system that is centralized and not linked to employment is because people do not work all their life in the same company.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

9. K&R!

[bemildred]

11. Now with this I can agree. nt

[Dr Fate]

27. Good- and he said it in an Op-ED- where many folks will see it. n/t

n/t