Kucinich: The Private Mandate Sausage Machine

The Private Mandate Sausage Machine
Dennis Kucinich

It is said one should not ask how sausage or laws are made. Are you concerned about a public option? Let me share with you some insight about health care legislation which may not be good for your health.

A lesson in politics. The Kucinich Prediction: Here's what's going to happen ...

House will make a big deal about keeping/putting a public option in HR3200 because it competes with insurance companies and will keep insurance rates low.

The White House will refer to the President's speech last week where he spoke favorably of the public option.

The Senate will kill the competitive public option in favor of non-competitive "co-ops". Senate leaders like Kent Conrad have said the votes to pass a public option were never there in the Senate.
The bill will come to a House-Senate Conference Committee without the public option.

House Democrats will be told to support the conference report on the legislation to support the President.

The bill will pass, not with a "public option" but with a private mandate requiring 30 million uninsured to buy private health insurance (if one doesn't already have it). If you are broke, you may get a subsidy. If you are not broke, you will get a fine if you do not purchase insurance.

This legislative sausage will be celebrated as a new breakthrough and will be packaged as health insurance reform. However, the bill may require a Surgeon General's warning label: Your Money or Your Life!

The bill that Congress passes may pale in comparison to the bill that millions of Americans will get every month/year for having or not having private health insurance.

It will take four years for the new legislation to go into effect. During that time we are going to build a constituency of millions in support of real health care, a constituency which will be recognized and a cause which is right and just: Health Care as a Civil Right.

(PLEASE KEEP THIS KICKED)

half-assed, pro insurance co. bill is ultimately passed isn't the final word. If a mandate to buy expensive private insurance is signed into law, people are going to be pissed - and the blame is going to be put squarely on the D's.

this is a direct tax on the america people. they can technically avoid the fine to the federal government by paying for private insurance, but a tax by any other name is still a tax.

it could be argued that this is a violation of obama's promise not to raise taxes on the middle class.

remember, some of the people who are uninsured are so because they feel it is uneconomical for them.


solving the problem of the uninsured by forcing them to buy insurance, whether they like it or not, is BULLSHIT.

i agree with dk. this will prove very unpopular among many of the people it is intended to affect, and will deliver more profits to insurance companies without discernable cost containment. in other words, it will pretty much suck for everyone except the folks who bribed congress.

Because Corporations call the shots in Washington.

The cost should be three to four thousand dollars per capita, much cheaper than what we WILL HAVE CHOSEN by then. But, the CBO will be denegrated by a bunch of articles by then, and so the low amount will be "controversial" and not much liked.