Kucinich on health care reform: "this is a stronger bill that will protect Americans"

[ProSense]

Kucinich Strengthens Health Care Bill

Secures Four Amendments in Health Care Reform Bill

Congressman Kucinich 111th

Washington, Jul 17 -

In addition to securing a historic victory for states’ single-payer health care, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today won adoption of four other amendments in HR 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act. The Kucinich amendments:

• drive down the cost and increase the access of prescription drugs by ending the pharmaceutical industry’s practice of manipulating physician prescribing habits to pharmaceutical representatives;
• ending the insurance industry practice of raising costs or decreasing coverage for Americans during the time Americans are not allowed to switch plans;
• require the disclosure of insurance company costs like advertising and marketing costs, as well as executive compensation, that use consumer’s money to increase profits instead of covering care;
• improve access to integrative medicine by requiring its consideration for standard coverage and by requiring the identification of integrative medicine providers .

“With the addition of this language, this is a stronger bill that will protect Americans and hold health insurance companies accountable to their customers,” said Kucinich.

Evidently, Kucinich supports the public option.

[abumbyanyothername]

1. Kucinich is not all or nothing

but his preferred approach is single payer.

[ProSense]

6. Who said he was? n/t

[chill_wind]

14. And as a supporter and resident of his state, neither am I.

KnR for DK.

[robinlynne]

2. fantastic. Thank-you Congressman!

[ProSense]

5. Evidently, this isn't good news to some.

:rofl:

[G_j]

7. getting

unreced, I noticed...

[ProSense]

8. Curious?

Not really!

[babylonsister]

3. Maybe he's using logic and doing what might work.

What a concept!

[ProSense]

4. Yes,

it's logical to be on the right side of history.

:)

[MarjorieG]

9. Can we negotiate pharma pricing on HR 3200. How much can we change when gets to the floor to get

combined, like eliminating firewall to public option? Making it a real public option, or an increase to Medicare recipients.

Confused about procedure and how much the initial bills lock us into the final result here.

[ProSense]

10. It will be interesting to see what the final bill looks like n/t

[ProSense]

11. Really want to hear from Kucinich supporter

On this statement.

[nightrain]

23. here starts the baiting....

[eridani]

12. He also has an amendment that would waive ERISA so that states could do single payer n/t

[chill_wind]

13. Yes he does.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-carmichael/kucinich-keeps-single-pay_b_243287.html

[John Q. Citizen]

15. I would dispute your conclusion. Public Option supporters won't discuss the CBO report but

Kucinich will. As you are aware, the CBO estimates that only up to 10 million Americans will be enrolled in the so-called public option by 2019.

Kucinich has already pointed out that this bill is a rip off and I applaud his effort to make the bill less of a rip-off.

Still, making it less than a rip off has always been the mission of the single payer supporters, while making it more of a rip off seems to be the venue of the public option supporters.

K&R for discussion of these issues.

[ProSense]

16. Now, who is in denial

You: Kucinich has already pointed out that this bill is a rip off and I applaud his effort to make the bill less of a rip-off.

“With the addition of this language, this is a stronger bill that will protect Americans and hold health insurance companies accountable to their customers,” said Kucinich.

Bills that rip people off also protect them.

Ludicrous.

[John Q. Citizen]

17. Will you discuss the CBO report with me? Or is that off limits for you? As you are probably aware ,

the CBO report says that HR3200 will enroll at most 10 million people in the so-called public option by 2019.

Do you argee with me that the Congressional Budget Office has made this finding?

So in all honesty, the public options is effectively non-existent in this bill, correct?

[ProSense]

19. Become informed

New HELP Bill Covers 97 Percent Of Americans, Costs $600 Billion

WASHINGTON — Democrats on a key Senate Committee outlined a revised and far less costly health care plan Wednesday night that includes a government-run insurance option and an annual fee on employers who do not offer coverage to their workers.

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The AP obtained a copy.

By contrast, an earlier, incomplete proposal carried a price tag of roughly $1 trillion and would have left millions uninsured, CBO analysts said in mid-June.

The letter indicated the cost and coverage improvements resulted from two changes. The first calls for a government-run health insurance option to compete with private coverage plans, an option that has drawn intense opposition from Republicans.

Stop relying on spin.

[John Q. Citizen]

25. How many people did the CBO say would be covered by the public option in the bill? Zero.

Yes

Zero

I read your linked article, and the article itself doesn't say how many Americans would be in the Public Option Pool created by the HELP Committe Senate Bill.

However, the Congressional Budget Office did estimate how many Americans would be covered by the public plan as contained in the HELP bill and the estimate was zero. The reason for this is that the CBO estimated that the cost of purchasing insurance in the Public Plan would be the same as purchasing insurance in the open market under the provisions of the public plan

The CBO estimates that the updated version of the HELP bill would cost about 400 billion less over four years because of less subsidies and less coverage and less access to the insurance exchange plus penalties on employers who didn't comply with the mandate to purchase private insurance policies.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10431/07-02-HELPltr.pdf

"The estimated cost of this draft of the legislation is roughly $400 billion
less over 10 years than the cost CBO estimated for an earlier version of the
proposal (in CBO’s letter dated June 15, 2009). A number of changes in the
legislation account for that difference. First, the subsidies available in the
insurance exchanges would be less extensive; there would now be no
premium subsidies for individuals and families with income above
400 percent of the federal poverty level, and subsidies for people below that
level would be smaller. Second, a penalty (labeled an “equity assessment”)
was added for employers that do not offer insurance coverage to their
workers and contribute a specified share of the premium. Third, the new
draft substantially limits the opportunity for employees with an offer of
health insurance from their employer to receive subsidies in the insurance
exchange because their employer’s offer was deemed unaffordable.
Collectively, those changes contributed to a substantially lower estimate of
the number of people who would purchase coverage through the insurance
exchanges (and a corresponding reduction in federal subsidy payments) and
led to a much smaller estimated impact on the amount of coverage provided
through employment-based plans. The new draft also includes provisions
regarding a “public plan,” but those provisions did not have a substantial
effect on the cost or enrollment projections, largely because the public plan
would pay providers of health care at rates comparable to privately
negotiated rates—and thus was not projected to have premiums lower than
those charged by private insurance plans in the exchanges.

So what the CBO tells me is the Senate HELP committee plan is mandated private insurance with subsidies for some low income people.

It's the Massachusetts Romney Care Plan on a federal level.

If the American people wanted Romney Care, they would have elected Romney.

As you say, become informed and quit relying on spin ProSense. You should know better.

[ProSense]

26. The public option is a choice

The CBO can't read minds. The passage you highlight together with your comments are nonsense. You keep going back to before the 97% covered and trying to spin nonsense.

[John Q. Citizen]

28. The public option is just like private insurance? Is that why you favor it?

Look, I've been civil as you have made your repeated little digs and insults.

If you don't trust the Congressional Budget Office then why do you trust the people have have claimed long and loud that a public option would or could keep the insurance companies honest? Could provide coverage for less? Would supplant private insurance over time?

The Senate HELP bill doesn't do that.
The House HR3200 bill doesn't do that.


I would hope they get substantially altered before a final vote but unless they do they are both crap. They are not public option as we were led to believe a public option would function.


You have been suckered but don't try to sham everyone else.

Nobody who reads the source material is fooled. And you are not a reliable source for good information because your information is repeatedly wrong.

Get informed. Stop listening to the spin. Take your own advice. Or quit giving advice. Thank you.

[ProSense]

29. "The public option is just like private insurance?" You do realize

the difference between opinion and fact, don't you?

[John Q. Citizen]

31. I didn't write the CBO report, and you didn't read it apparently.

[ProSense]

32. Maybe not, but

you're doing a lousy job of interpreting it. Again, stick to the current estimates: 97% of Americans. Period.

[John Q. Citizen]

33. Romney care makes the same claims for the same reasons. But we didn't vote for Romney because

we want health care that won't go away as the cost sky rockets.

[ProSense]

35. "we didn't vote for Romney because we want health care" Another silly opinion.

We didn't vote for Romney because he's an idiot Republican.

Some people are perpetual critics, but all they have are BS opinions.

[John Q. Citizen]

38. Some people are too stupid to form thier own opinions so they just parrot the

party line. There are a lot of Repos like that.

[ProSense]

40. Some people don't realize when they're mumbling in the wind.

Join the debate, but come with facts, not BS spin.

[lumberjack_jeff]

24. It's good to have goals. Single payer supporters have a goal to make it less of a ripoff.

My goal is to be the omnipotent being of the universe. The master of time, space and dimension.

Neither of us will reach our goal in this lifetime.

In the meantime, I'll settle for informing myself and guaranteeing coverage to as many of the 50 million uninsured as possible.

But it's funny, being a public option supporter, I've never really examined my desire to make healthcare even more of a ripoff. Thanks for the insights to my motivations.

Certainly, healthcare reform needs more woo. That'll make it a sure-fire winner.

[John Q. Citizen]

30. Romney Care is what you advocate, and that's fine. But you should be honest about it

and not pretend that language exists in any of the bills that isn't there.

If these bills pass, when the public figures out that Dems were lying about a lower cost public option they could buy into that would eventually lead to single payer, they will desert the party in droves.

If the American people wanted Romney care, they would have voted for Romney.

[lumberjack_jeff]

45. A public option will be available to anyone seeking coverage from the exchange.

It is expected to be 10% cheaper than the competition. It strikes me as counterintuitive that only one-in-ten people will leave with the best-value choice in their shopping cart.

A possible motive for conservative estimating is suggested by the recent Lewin study (commissioned by the rightwing Heritage institute) which shows the public plan will insure 103 million people because it is 30% cheaper. If the CBO tells the insurance companies that the bill will be their undoing, political opposition will grow.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/upload/HouseBillHeritageRevised.pdf

The link really is worth reading. They describe the public plan as being the greatest thing since sliced bread, thus it must be opposed.

[truedelphi]

37. #1. n/t

[lumberjack_jeff]

18. Yay! Clearly what this country needs is more homeopathy!

Anyone want to guess who supported the amendments? Republicans or Democrats?

Poison pills are welcomed by this congress.

[ProSense]

20. "Anyone want to guess who supported the amendments? "

Kucinich since he wrote them?

[lumberjack_jeff]

Yup, that's one.

Who voted for the amendments besides him?

[G_j]

21. no, why don't you tell us? nt

[lumberjack_jeff]

22. I think it's kind of interesting that Dennis doesn't tell us.

His press release is notably quiet on anything which would allow us to google which amendments he's talking about and who voted for them.

on edit
On review of the education and labor website, only one of his amendments (single payer for states) shows up, and all the *other stuff* in his news release is not in it.

Either;
* the amendments were offered by someone else
* the website is not up to date with the latest amendments

[John Q. Citizen]

27. I read the were going to vote on Wiener's single payer amendment yesterday. Was that up?

[lumberjack_jeff]

44. Not on the page I saw. n/t

[ipaint]

34. It's not a stronger bill.

BILL MOYERS: Do you believe the health care industry when it tells President Obama that "we will voluntarily cut costs"?

MARCIA ANGELL: No. I mean, these are investor owned businesses. If they behave like charities, heads would roll in the executive suites. They are there to maximize profits. And that's exactly what they do.

TRUDY LIEBERMAN: What's happened now is that the industries have gotten pretty much what they want out of the bills that are going forward.

And so, they need to build public support. They need to make everybody in the public realize that they actually are wearing white hats in this one. But behind the scenes, they are lobbying ferociously against the public plan, against cuts in doctors fees, against all kinds of things that they don't want. And for that they're using a different sort of lobbying tactic. All of these are communications or lobbying strategies that they know how to do and they are very excellent at doing them.

MARCIA ANGELL: It's clear that they can turn it to their advantage.

TRUDY LIEBERMAN: Right.

MARCIA ANGELL: That nobody is really trying to break their-- except the single payer people -- their death grip on the system. And here you have hundreds of for profit insurance companies that maximize their income by denying care to the people who need it most. And that's the insurance system. That's how we pay for health care.

But you also have to look at how we deliver health care. And we deliver that, primarily or largely, in for-profit facilities -- businesses, hospitals -- whose interest is in delivering only profitable care. So, we have a system that's through and through, in both the payment system and the delivery system, is oriented toward profits. Neither the Senate nor the House is doing anything to change that.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07242009/watch.html

The full video and transcript is up online.

I don't trust politicians and that goes for kucinich to obama to the likes of cheney. It sounds like kucinich is spinning his "achievements" for his constituents, the folks that vote him in. The only thing that has a chance of changing what will be a total disaster of a bill is his amendment to allow states to try single payer. Other than that the reform will fail. It does not deal with out of control costs. The insurance companies will never allow a public option that has even a sliver of a chance of eventually putting them out of business because controlling costs will put them out of business. It's just that simple.

[ProSense]

36. "It sounds like kucinich is spinning his 'achievements' for his constituents"

Wow, suddenly Kucinich is an opportunistic sellout.

[ipaint]

39. That's my opinion

And I am not an avid kucinich can do no wrong supporter. YOU want to spin that as me talking for everyone, that's your problem. I was clear from the start where I have always stood, none of them can be trusted.

[ProSense]

41. That's fine, but the point about the bill is still nonsense. n/t

[ipaint]

42. And that's your opinion.

Which I think is nonsense so I guess we'll see because I am sure we will get what the insurance companies are paying millions to give us.

[ProSense]

43. "I am sure we will get what the insurance companies are paying millions to give us."

And that's nothing but speculation.

[ipaint]

46. My entire adult life that is exactly what has happened.

I see nothing and no one in a leadership position that will change that. People will always settle for less. That's how we ended up here.
60+ years after truman proposed health care for everyone and we have zilch.

That is what better than nothing gets the majority of us. Some get a little better the majority get nothing.

If you can speculate that the public option will lead to health care for all even though it hasn't in every single case where it's been implemented, I can speculate given the very real recent history of the upper class in the last 60 years that we are about to get royally screwed by them once again.

After a while it's like watching theatre, the same plot over and over with people expecting some kind of miraculous result this one time. Everybody knows their part and the result is always the same.

Maybe someday we will fool them all and collectively demand that everyone down to the least of us deserves what all of us want and need. Non-negotiable.

The much pandered to middle class still has a way to fall before that happens.

[ipaint]

47. Drug co's spent 25 million lobbying congress so far this year

According to the Associated Press, the drug industry's trade group PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) and the drug company Pfizer "reported spending more money than other health care organizations on lobbying in the second quarter of this year" -- $6.2 million from PhRMA, $5.6 million from Pfizer.

"Including its latest report, PhRMA has now spent $13.1 million lobbying so far this year. Pfizer has reported $11.7 million in lobbying expenses for 2009."

This is part of the reason, as Alicia Mundy and Laura Meckler recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, that "the pharmaceuticals industry, which President Barack Obama promised to 'take on' during his campaign, is winning most of what it wants in the health-care overhaul."

Their story describes "a string of victories" plucked from the Senate Finance Committee by drug company lobbyists, including no cost-cutting steps, no cheaper drugs to be allowed across the border from Canada, and no direct Federal government negotiations with the pharmaceutical companies to lower Medicare drug prices.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/25

[Sensible321]

48. To Kucinich Supporters - Is This True?

This site claims to represent and organization called "The Order of the Royal Honor" which lists Kucinich as a member along with many royal family members from several countries. They criticize many of the ills of our social/economic system, but it stretches the imagination to conceive that the wealthiest families in the world had no hand in the banking scam that underlies our economic crisis.

http://www.royalhonor.com/about_us.htm

Another related site claims Bernie Sanders is also a member of this org, though he is not listed on the main page.

http://www.muziic.com/viewchannel.php?channel=royalhonordotcom

Please tell me this is all a big hoax ala "The Onion" newspaper. If the most progressive members of Congress are part and parcel with these puppet-masters, the situation would be even worse than I had imagined.