Dennis Kucinich: Healthcare Update

[G_j]

Exciting Healthcare Update
Dear Friends,

With your support, your phone calls, your emails, we won a major legislative victory today for a state single payer health care option in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. The House Education and Labor Committee approved the Kucinich Amendment by a vote of 27-19, with 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans voting yes.

The amendment propels the growing single payer health care movement at the state level. There are at least ten states which have active single payer efforts in their legislatures. They are California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington. The amendment mandates a single payer state will receive the right to waive the application of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which has in the past been used to nullify efforts to expand state or local government health care.

Under the Kucinich Amendment a state's application for a waiver from ERISA is granted automatically if the state has signed into law a single payer plan. With the amendment, for the first time, the state single payer health care option is shielded from an ERISA-based legal attack. Now that the underlying bill has been passed, as amended, by the full committee, we must make sure that Congress knows that we want the provision kept in the bill at final passage!

The state single payer option was one of five major amendments which I obtained support to get included in HR3200. One amendment brings into standard coverage for the first time complementary and alternative medicine, (integrative medicine). Another amendment drives down the cost of prescription drugs by ending pharmaceutical industry's sharp practices manipulating physician prescribing habits. An amendment stops the insurance industry from increasing premiums at the time when people are not permitted to change health plans; and finally an amendment imposing a requirement on insurance companies that they disclose the cost of advertising, marketing and executive compensation expenses (which generally divert money from patient care).

Please make sure you post this message on your social networking site, ask all your friends to get involved and encourage everyone you know to sign up at www.Kucinich.us so we can build full momentum behind this movement for real health care.

Let's do this!
Dennis Kucinich

[cali]

1. Thanks for posting and thanks to Dennis.

I'm fully on board with these common sense amendments.

[Selatius]

2. We could actually enact single-payer or near single-payer systems at the state level.

They would serve as convenient models for the federal government if or when there are enough liberals in Congress to replace the current system with a single-payer format.

[Norrin Radd]

3. kr

[timtom]

4. Thanks!

You beat me by about 5 minutes in posting this.

I clicked on the link provided and volunteered for a whole bunch of stuff.

DK is one politician I can get motivated for.

(Oh, and K&R)

[foginthemorn]

5. Thanks for all your work that you do for us Dennis.

[AnOhioan]

6. Glad to recommend and glad that Dennis is...

working for something that this country needs so desperately.

[chill_wind]

7. Thank you and DK. KnR.

[rucky]

8. This almost made me cry...

to think that there's so few congresspeople like Dennis who we know for sure is working for the public interest. It should be what we expect from all of our reps, but there's only a small handful actually doing their jobs.

Getting these through committee with bipartisan support is a major achievement.

[Wednesdays]

9. K&R

:kick:

[G_j]

10. k

[Vidar]

11. Thanks for the good news. Recommended.

[Sebastian Doyle]

12. I have mixed feelings about this one.

While I'm on board, in principle, with what Dennis is trying to do here, and I can see the wisdom in doing this on a state by state basis in and of itself, (which is how abortion laws began, and how marriage equality is evolving) there is also the current economic realities in many states. And a Hell of a lot easier to fund it on a national level, if they would just do the goddamn right thing (i.e. tax the rich and end the fucked up "wars" and the industry that creates them)