It mandates people purchase private insurance. It is a $70 billion giveaway to private insurance companies and locks in this system that’s the problem, not the solution.
I made every effort, right from the beginning, as a single-payer advocate. We couldn’t really make this bill single payer; that was taken off the table. But we did something else: We were able to get a bill in the committee passed that would protect the right of states to be able to pursue a not-for-profit healthcare plan at a state level to shield it from legal attack. And that was taken out of the legislation after it had passed. It was taken out by the administration, which has whittled down the public option to the point of not having it truly compete with insurance companies.
So what you have here is people continuing to be at the mercy of the insurance companies, except in this case the government is going to subsidize the policies. People are still going to have premiums, co-pays and deductibles to deal with. And, there’s really a great deal of question here as to what in the world we’re doing in creating a healthcare system that’s really based on the premises of private insurance.
This locks us into a for-profit system that the government subsidizes. It’s not going to save money in the long run. It’s not going to provide the kind of broad healthcare services the American people need. It’s going to limit the choices that people have over a longer period of time. And people will have to buy private insurance. What’s going on in this country? We’re told that the only choice we have is to buy private insurance, and with the robust public option being gone, it makes sure that there’s little competition with the insurance companies. This bill doesn’t effectively moderate what they can charge for premiums or co-pays or deductibles. It just says people have to have insurance. Well, insurance doesn’t necessarily equate to care, and care comes at a cost.
Senator Baucus has had a couple different iterations. His first bill didn’t have a public option at all. When Mr. Hacker first came out with his proposal for a public option, it was going to cover 129 million Americans. That really would compete in an exchange with private insurance. But that’s been whittled down to, depending on who you talk to, covering six to 11 million people. So only a fraction of Americans will have access to the public option, which means that there’s not effective competition with the insurance companies to drive down rates.
But as far as the House bill that I was confronted with, I just felt that it increased privatization of the healthcare system. Requiring the purchase of private insurance, the government subsidizing it, it ends up being a redistribution of the wealth of this nation upwards, which lately seems to be the sole purpose of the government.
American people are being locked into a for-profit insurance structure. And we have to ask ourselves, why is this the best that we can do? Why should we settle for this without fighting back? Why shouldn’t we insist that a robust public option is the only way to make sure that the American people really have a fighting chance with the insurance companies? As it is now, the government is going to be subsidizing the insurance companies.
We were told last year the only way people could get unemployment benefits is if Congress votes for war, the only way we can pass a hate crime is if Congress votes for war, the only way we can get housing is to give Wall Street a bailout. And that didn’t put most people back in their homes who lost them. We’re going to get jobs by giving Wall Street a bailout; that didn’t work. Businesses are going to be helped by giving Wall Street a bailout; that didn’t work.
Our whole economy is being organized in a way that takes the wealth of the nation and sends it right to the top. And this healthcare bill is no different. And we’ve got to fight back, and that’s why I could not vote for this. If we were able to protect the right of states to have a single-payer plan, maybe the bill would have been worth voting for. But that was taken out. So what are we left with? Private, for-profit health insurance, with the government subsidizing it.
Ten states are actively involved in single-payer movements. If I give my vote to that, what I’m essentially doing is putting a nail in the coffin of the single-payer movement. And I’m not going to do that.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Democratic Congress member from Ohio. He voted no on the healthcare bill that just passed the House.
– from democracynow.org