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November 03, 2008 C-SPAN
Congressman Dennis Kucinich on the floor of the House during debate of Congressional Resolution in Opposition To United Nations Gaza War Crimes Report.
Washington, Oct 29 -Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement after House Leadership announced the latest version of health care reform:
“Today, advocates of true health care reform were disappointed to learn that the Kucinich amendment was removed from the latest version of the health care reform bill. At the end of the day, states may be given the option to opt out, but won’t be allowed to opt into a proven system that provides all of a state’s residents with better health care.
“Many states are demanding single payer. Not only does it help people stay out of poverty and provide health care for all, but it would provide major relief for states facing budget difficulties. The Lewin Group’s financial analysis of the California single payer bill that passed the legislature twice found that “the net cost of the program to state and local governments is a savings of about $900 million” in 2006 alone. There are also strong single payer movements in Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Colorado, and New Mexico.
“If a state wants better health care than can be provided by the federal government in the health care bill we are seeing today, the federal government should not stand in their way. The removal of the Kucinich amendment constitutes yet another capitulation to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries who are already reaping billions of dollars from the bill.
The Kucinich amendment had been added to HR 3200 in a 27-19 bipartisan vote in the Education and Labor Committee.
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August 19, 2009 MSNBC
SCHULTZ: Welcome back THE Ed Show. Got some advice for the Obama White House, you dance with the one who brought you. Progressives put the president in office. All last year, they knocked on doors, raised money, got out the vote, did it all. So comments like this really burn me up. Here`s an anonymous Obama adviser quoted in the "Washington Post" today: "I don`t understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo, said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. We`ve gotten to the point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don`t understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health care reform."
OK, this is what`s known as a five-second cooling off period.
I wonder where the left of the left got the idea that a public option was key to health care reform.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: I also strongly believe that one of the options in the exchange should be a public insurance option.
An option out there for people where the free market fails.
We should have a public plan to compete with the private plans. But, you know, these private insurance companies are always telling me what a great deal that they give to the American consumer. If it`s such a great deal, why are they worried about competing against the public plan?
We will not sign a bill that isn`t right for the American people. And I`m for the public option.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHULTZ: Joining me now is Congressman Dennis Kucinich, vice chair of the Progressive Caucus. Congressman, great to have you back on THE ED SHOW.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D), OHIO: Great to be with you,Ed.
SCHULTZ: Is the president playing this correctly? Is he patience going to pay off? Or is it time for him to get tough with Republicans, in your opinion?
KUCINICH: First of all, you raised a question about the left. And I think it is all about the left. It`s about 47 million left without insurance, about another 50 million left as uninsured. Millions left bankrupt because they can`t afford to pay hospital bills. It`s about what`s left.
I think that the president needs to go back to the drawing board actually, because the only true public option that will work is HR 676, the bill that I drafted with John Conyers, which is a single-payer, not-for- profit bill, that recognizes that one out of every three dollars in the system goes for the activities of the for-profit system. This is what the whole fight is about.
It`s about a fight over 800 billion dollars. And the insurance companies will stop at nothing to hold on to the American people`s wallet when it comes to health insurance.
Ah yes, I'm not surprised that psychiatrist David Gratzer testified this week that the Canadian healthcare system is just awful and how the poor deprived Canadians are simply pouring across the border to the Mayo Clinic to get specialized medical care.
Oddly enough, he forgot to mention that the Canadian government was not only sending them across the border, they were picking up the check. Yes, it's a system so awful, even Canadian conservatives defend it.
How gratifying it was, to see Dennis Kucinich lay the smackdown on this guy.
Dr. Gratzer has been a prominent freemarket advocate since his college days and has been riding that gravy train ever since. He is especially beloved of freemarket conservatives because of a piece he wrote two years ago that hit the wingnut sweet spot: "The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care."
He's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a "non-partisan" think tank funded by the usual partisan suspects:
The Manhattan Institute received $19,470,416 in grants from 1985-2005, from foundations such as the Koch Family Foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation, Inc., the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. The Manhattan Institute does not disclose its corporate funding, but the Capital Research Center listed its contributors as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Exxon Mobil, Chase Manhattan, Cigna, Sprint, Reliant Energy, Lincoln Financial Group Foundation, and Merrill Lynch.
So I think you can see where he's coming from. And really, what could make the right wing more excited than a Canadian doctor, criticizing the Canadian health care system?
You're probably not aware that for the past decade or so, right-wing American groups have been pouring a lot of money into Canada to undermine their health system. (Can you guess why? I knew you could! So American health care corporations can make a killing there, too!)
Dr. Gratzer's biggest thing is hammering away on wait times - even though the long wait times are mostly for non-urgent care. (You can read a rebuttal about many of the common myths here.) He also thinks the way to bring down the cost of prescription drugs is... to cut back on those pesky FDA requirements!
While serving as an adviser to Rudy Giuliani's campaign, he was called out by Factcheck.org and others for supplying a bogus cancer statistic Rudy used in an ad:
Rudy Giuliani's latest radio ad, which began airing in New Hampshire this week, draws a stark picture for anyone diagnosed with prostate cancer in England. "I had prostate cancer, five, six years ago," the Republican presidential candidate says in the ad. "My chance of surviving prostate cancer, and thank God I was cured of it, in the United States, 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44 percent under socialized medicine.”
"You would get an F in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins if you did that calculation," said Johns Hopkins professor Gerard Anderson, whose 2000 study "Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data" has been cited by Gratzer as a source for his statistics.... Five-year prostate cancer survival rates are higher in the United States than in Britain but, according to Howard Parnes of the National Cancer Institute, this is largely a statistical illusion.... Both Anderson and Parnes say that it is impossible, on the basis of the available data, to conclude that Americans have a significantly better chance of surviving prostate cancer than Britons.
Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich absolutely tore it up today on Capitol Hill. In this video he is questioning Dr. David Gratzer of the Manhattan Institute. One need only read the title of Gratzer's new book, "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Healthcare" (complete with forward written by Milton Friedman) to know what side of the debate he was on.
Gratzer was there to spew lies and right wing talking points about the Canadian health care system, but Kucinich wasn't having any of it. As always, my hat goes off to Dennis! You can watch the entire CSPAN video here.
