Dennis Kucinich: White House Knows How to Get My Vote

Guess Obama needs to sweeten the pot,for Dennis as they did with Louisiana,Flordia and Nebraska? BS Obama care will cost you more money not less,why is Obama lying about it?

When is Pelosi, Reid and Obama going to call out the military which they cannot do but will change the constitution to try and stop us all in the streets??? They want now our freedom to fish!! what a joke these people are. They want us to think they are for us but they are doing everything in a marxist way now.

I hope Kucinich reconsiders. There aren’t enough votes to pass a bill with the public option, much as I would like one.
The current bill will do a lot of good for keeping premiums down for those with insurance, for allowing individuals access to more affordable insurance by letting them pool in an exchange, it stops some of the worst offenses the insurance companies now engage in, like denying those with pre-existing conditions.
We need help now, not a failed bill because it contained a public option.

I am all for Kucinich. This revamping of the Health care industry is worthless without a public option.

God Bless you Dennis!
Go and sway more liberal Democrats so that this miscarriage of the democratic process dies the ignoble death it deserves.
Americans – with and without health care – deserve better stewardship.

Perhaps a new WH ploy to get votes-RHAM it to them in the showers!

The fundamental problem with healthcare in American is that the cost for providing healthcare is greater than the healthcare recipient can afford.
Prior to 1929 American healthcare recipients were responsible for the payment of healthcare services provided to them by physicians and hospitals. The physicians and hospitals had to accept payment that was less than the actual cost for the services provided. Physicians absorbed the loss. Hospitals were mainly non-profit charity funded that provided accommodations and ancillary services at a loss.
The approach to resolve this under funded problem was to create funding pools (our current day employer based risk and cost pools) where future healthcare services would be paid from these pools for healthcare recipients that contributed premiums to these funding pools. This resulted in the creation of healthcare insurance organizations which initially were non-profit.
This approach has been used for the last eighty years and worked in the beginning when healthcare services were more basic. As advances in healthcare were discovered and implemented the cost of healthcare began to increase. Hospitals were added as profit organizations. Healthcare insurance organizations were added as profit organizations and beginning in the 1980’s non-profit healthcare insurance organizations began to convert to profit organizations.
In 1965 the Medicare program (covered over 65 year old beneficiaries) was created and governed by the federal HCFA department (now CMS). Contracts were awarded cost plus contracts to private healthcare industry intermediaries (Part A – Hospital) and carriers (Part B) for adjudicating Medicare claims for payment out of the federal Medicare fund (funded by taxes withheld from employee paychecks). The same healthcare delivery system (physicians and hospitals) which was used to provide healthcare services to the private sector was used for providing healthcare services to Medicare beneficiaries (and this is still true today). The Fee for Service payment system was used to pay for both the private and Medicare healthcare services. The traditional healthcare insurance product was indemnity which basically paid the usual / customary (prevailing) charge for a healthcare service (procedure performed by physician with a given specialty in a given location). Medicare basically used the same Fee for Service payment system which also paid the usual / customary charge.
As physicians and hospitals began to increase their charges the usual / customary charge began to rise. This resulted in new insurance products (Managed Care, PPO, and HMO) to contain the rising healthcare cost. These new products require physicians and hospitals to negotiate discount prices for their services provided to insurance companies’ subscribers and their dependents. The more subscribers (employer groups / employees) an insurance company has to offer to physicians and hospitals the lower the negotiate rate will be. The negotiate discount prices has contain cost some. However, non covered services are charged at the physician’s and hospital’s billed charged (no discounts) to the subscriber for payment.
So, this is where we are today. During the past eighty years we have gone from basic healthcare services provided by non-profit insurance industry and non-profit healthcare providers (basically funded by charity and small insurance subscriber premiums) to advanced healthcare services provided by for-profit insurance industry and for-profit healthcare providers (basically funded by large insurance subscriber premiums). The healthcare cost is now at a point where the cost exceeds funds available in employer risk / cost pools. Small businesses can not afford to offer healthcare insurance to their employees which results in a growing number of uninsured Americans. Compounded by the fact that non covered services are charged at the physician’s and hospital’s billed charged (no discounts) to the uninsured for payment. Further, there is a huge fraud and abuse issue in the current payment system. And Americans are not making the right healthy life style choices which results in an increase in demand for healthcare services.
Next step. First, we need to acknowledge that healthcare cost is greater than the capacity for individuals or pools of healthcare recipients to pay. Americans need to come together to meet this challenge by creating a single pool fund. The single pool fund needs to be funded by all that can afford to contribute and supplemented by those who can provide charity contributions. Second, Americans need to make the right healthy life style choices to reduce the demand for healthcare services. Third, we need to change the healthcare delivery system to be cost efficient. Convert back to non-profit and charity stakeholders. Encourage community volunteer work and free clinics. Eliminate fraud and abuse in the payment system. Use best practices for facility, procurement, and resource management and create a decision support system for perpetual improvement of quality of patient care and for perpetual improvement of cost efficiencies.

Marty: you are spot on.

Kucinich has it right…..it plays right into the hands of the health insurance industry, and is self-defeatist in terms of controlling costs.
The public option, however, is very inadequate protection against that situation.
Only a National Health Care for all, system, will control costs, and provide minimal care to everyone.

The reason I qualify allowing the public option to be bought in at the state level is twofold: First, I do believe that States should be allowed to go this way if they truly would want to. (Funded by their own resources, of course, or it is not truly something that another State opts out of) I have no problem whatsoever with the Federal Government putting in place *minimal* measures designed to make such programs easier to coordinate between states that participate in this. Going beyond that, I would object to the Federal Government being there. They have a track record of screwing it up that the States cannot come close to matching. Secondly, I sincerely believe that Social Experiments are a good thing. Let them try and maybe fail. I could be wrong, and it might work. In my opinion, those States most likely to do such a thing are California and New York. With California right now holding out their hands because they cannot pay for their current social problems and with their current bond rating of “Junk Bonds” for their Municipal Bonds that they typically float out there to put the problem off for another generation, I would *Love* to see them try this there. I think it would flop there worse than it is in Massachusetts right now, where the Governor has had to put price freezes in place in the face of costs that are spiraling higher faster than any of the other States since starting *their* mandated universal coverage. These Social Experiments, done on the State Level, could work. If not, the damage is mitigated. If so, there is a good model to work from and different States will attempt this differently, if at all, so you do have a *higher* chance that someone might get it right and make it work!

I dont care what color you are, what religion, what race..any of those things..I find it appalling that so many folks posting here are demanding liberty for themselves but find it perfectly acceptable to deny the same liberties to others that they see as less deserving of such.