Let's hear some comparrisons of health plans by candidates.

[Toots]

I heard Gephardt on This week and he said his plan was the best because it covered everybody (no loopholes) where as Kerry's and Dean's plan both would leave millions without any coverage. I want total health care for every single person in America and I want it yesterday. I remember when I was in the service how nice it was to just go to the doctor and not worry about how I could pay for it. Government doctors worked very well there, why couldn't we have the same thing for general society? We could still have some private practice doctors for the very rich. I don't get it. Costs would actually come way down and taxes could actually be reduced. :shrug: Who's got the best plan and why?

[hippywife]

1. Kucinich

http://www.kucinich.us/issues/issue_universalhealth.htm


The Kucinich plan is enhanced 'Medicare for All' -- a universal, single-payer system of national health insurance, carefully phased in over 10 years. It addresses everyone's needs, including the 40 million Americans without coverage and those paying exorbitant rates for health insurance. This approach to healthcare emphasizes patient choice, and puts doctors and patients in control of the system, not insurance companies. Coverage will be more complete than private insurance plans, encourage prevention and include prescription drugs.

Health care is currently dominated by insurance firms and HMOS, institutions that are more bureaucratic and costly than Medicare. People are waiting longer for appointments. Fewer people are getting a doctor of their choice. Physicians are given monetary incentives to deny care. Pre-existing illnesses are being used to deny coverage.

Over time, the Kucinich plan will remove private insurance companies from the system -- along with their waste, paperwork, profits, excessive executive salaries, advertising, sales commissions, etc -- and redirect resources to actual treatment. Insurance companies do not heal or treat anyone, physicians and health practitioners do ...and thousands of physicians support a single-payer system because it reduces bureaucracy and shelters the doctor-patient relationship from HMO and insurance company encroachment.

Non-profit national health insurance will decrease total healthcare spending while providing more treatment and services -- through reductions in bureaucracy and cost-cutting measures such as bulk purchasing of prescriptions drugs. Funding will come primarily from existing government healthcare spending (more than $1 trillion) and a phased-in tax on employers of 7.7% (almost $1 trillion). The employers' tax is less than the 8.5% of payroll now paid on average by companies that provide private insurance. For budgetary details, click here.

This type of system -- privately-delivered health care, publicly financed -- has worked well in other countries, none of whom spend as much per capita on healthcare as the United States. 'We're already paying for national healthcare; we're just not getting it, says Kucinich. The cost-effectiveness of a single-payer system has been affirmed in many studies, including those conducted by the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office. The GAO has written:
"If the US were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer, as in Canada, the savings in administrative costs (10% to private insurers) would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."

Over the years, groups and individuals as diverse as Consumers Union, labor unions, the CEO of General Motors, the editorial boards of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and St. Louis Post Dispatch, and Physicians for a National Health Program have endorsed a single-payer approach. It is sound economics -- what actuaries call 'Spreading the Risk' -- to extend Medicare to younger and healthier sectors of our population, thereby putting everyone in one insurance pool. It permanently saves and improves Medicare, while eliminating duplicative private and government bureaucracies.

While enhanced Medicare for All makes economic sense, it has not made political sense to some, due to the power of the private insurance lobby. The streamlined Kucinich plan is very different than the 1993 Clinton HMO-based plan, a complex proposal that left big insurance firms in a central role. After Clinton's 'Managed Competition' plan failed without coming up for a vote, talk-radio host Jim Hightower asked President Clinton why he hadn't put forward a "simple, straightforward" single-payer plan "instead of all this bureaucracy." Clinton replied, "I thought it would be easier to pass" a bill that left the insurance industry in place. "I guess I was wrong about that."

[Toots]

2. The GAO has written:

"If the US were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer, as in Canada, the savings in administrative costs (10% to private insurers) would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."
This is the part every candidate needs to get out and hammer it home. It would be cheaper, it would be cheaper, it would be cheaper.

[hippywife]

3. With the exception of

Carol Mosely-Braun, who also supports a univeral-single payer plan, I believe all the other candidates support tweeking the current system.

[aquart]

5. Yes!

Give me national health or fuck off.

[quinnox]

4. Kucinich's is the best

But it wouldn't be able to be passed. The next best is Gephardt. That might be able to be passed, with some luck. These two are the most comprehensive. The others aren't as ambitious, but at least it is something.

[aquart]

6. Stop compromising before the negotiation begins.

Something isn't good enough.

I am sick of something that does nothing.

Either American lives matter or they don't.

Either American health is a priority or it isn't.

The time has come to demand what should have been a given from a responsive, intelligent government wanting the best possible nation with the finest, readiest population. Ready and able for anything that comes. We aren't.

Either they care about us or paper money profits.

If we do not insist on everything we will get, as usual, nothing.

[Octafish]

7. Kerry's plan top-ranked by National Journal

Presidential Candidates' Health Care Proposals Ranked:
Kerry Health Plan Tops Democratic Field

July  23,  2003
National Journal

The July 19 issue of National Journal features a series of articles in which a committee of 10 health policy professionals rank health care proposals from Democratic presidential candidates and President Bush based on a scale of one to five, with five as the highest score.

The committee examined and ranked each proposal based on five areas: the uninsured, out-of-pocket costs, government costs, quality of care, and health care providers.

The Kerry health plan scored highest among the Democratic contenders and edged out President Bush as well for top honors.

Committee members rating the plans include:

* Robert Blendon, professor health policy and political analysis at the Harvard University School of Public Health 
* Paul Fronstin, senior research associate at the Employee Benefit Research Institute
* Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change 
* John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis
* Ed Haislmaier, visiting research fellow at the Heritage Foundation
* Ed Howard, executive vice president of the Alliance for Health Reform
* Chris Jennings, president of Jennings Policy Strategies (former health policy advisor to President Clinton)
* Jack Meyer, president of the Economic and Social Research Institute
* Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute
* Gail Wilensky, senior fellow at Project HOPE (former CMS Administrator under Bush I)


THE ARTICLE AND BACKGROUND CONTINUED...

http://www.johnkerry.com/news/clips/news_2003_0723b.html

Here's an overview from the John Kerry for President Campaign press release:

Kerry Wins Health Care Primary

Bipartisan Panel of Experts Say Kerry Plan to Make Health Care Accessible, Affordable for all Americans Rates Above All Other '04 Candidates

July  23,  2003

John Kerry has the best health care plan for America - please email this to five of your friends who want better health care, and we can show George W. Bush that Americans won't tolerate his health care agenda by and for the big insurance companies!!
Proving that he has the big ideas necessary to put America back on track and win the White House in 2004, Senator John Kerry beat out Democratic opponents and President Bush in a National Journal ranking of all the candidates' health care proposals.

A panel of 10 health policy professionals, representing a range of organizations from the conservative Heritage Foundation to the liberal Urban Institute, all agreed that John Kerry's plan to make health care more affordable and accessible is the best choice for doctors, health care workers, businesses, and all Americans looking for a solution to the health care crisis that has plagued our country for too long.

Kerry's plan would cover 27 million uninsured Americans and reduce premiums for everyone by 10%. With a plan that zeroes in so intensely on both the rising costs of health care and the crisis of the uninsured, it's no wonder the top experts in the health care field think Kerry's proposal is the best of the bunch!

http://www.johnkerry.com/news/clips/news_2003_0723.html