By Jonathan Springston, Senior Staff Writer, Atlanta Progressive News (March 19, 2007)
(APN) ATLANTA – Major 2008 Democratic candidates for President of the United States–including Clinton, Edwards, Kucinich, and Obama–have already begun addressing health care in their campaigns. However, US Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is the only major declared candidate who advocates for a single-payer health care system so far in this race.
Only Kucinich and former US Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) have offered comprehensive plans, whereas Clinton and Obama haven’t offered more than vague ideas so far, Atlanta Progressive News has learned. APN focuses on Clinton, Edwards, Kucinich, and Obama in this article.
Edwards offers a complete, but complex universal health care proposal, which advocates say doesn’t do enough to cut insurance industry profits out of the equation.
In the 2004 race, by contrast, there were three candidates–Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun, and Al Sharpton–endorsing single payer plans.
KUCINICH: SINGLE-PAYER UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE PLAN
"When people tell me that national health insurance is the right answer but is not politically feasible, I tell them that the opposite is true," Kucinich wrote in a statement on healthcare-now.org. "Passage is inevitable - it is only a matter of time."Kucinich is also for the second year now a co-sponsor of HR 676 in Congress, a bill sponsored by US Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), to enact single-payer universal health care nationwide. The bill number is the same in the 110th Session as it was in the 109th.
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