1. 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.
2. The White House will refer to the President's speech last week where he spoke favorably of the public option.
3. 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.
4. The bill will come to a House-Senate Conference Committee without the public option.
5. House Democrats will be told to support the conference report on the legislation to support the President.
6. 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.
Join our efforts. Sign the petition. Contribute. Insure a democratic future.
Thank you.
Dennis
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Dennis J. Kucinich (OH-10)
U.S. House of Representatives
If I were a betting man, my money'd be on something very close to that.
7 comments:
Thanks for posting this. I find Kos to be mostly unreadable, so I don't think I would have found this, otherwise. I disagree with Dennis on many things, but I can't help but admire him. It is probably because he isn't full of shit, like most politicians, and isn't afraid of taking a stand. That whole thing about UFO's shows he isn't afriad of saying anything. He is a breath of fresh air.
I think he is right, too.
All of that might happen, except this:
"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."
LOL, Bob.
Yeah, that's Kucinich's UFO after-effects talking there...
Yeah, Bob's got it. A little Kucinich dreamin' there. We will continue to be largely lazy and silent.
How likely is #6? Specifically, the part about people will be mandated to buy health insurance. I don't see that one being too popular with any crowd, except health insurance lobbyists of course.
"How likely is #6?"
Very likely. If we don't get most people insured, we continue to pay for them anyway in higher taxes and health cost changed to the rest of us. It's not like we are goign to let someone's kid die becuase they don't have insurance.
I realize the indirect way that the insured pay for the uninsured, but the part about being fined if you don't have health insurance is troubling and what will probably stick in the craw of pols opposed to reform. I went several years in the 90's without health insurance due to my crappy employment situation and being unable to afford it on my own. "Cobra? I'll take my chances, thank you." To think that with this plan I'd be fined would make lesser men foam at the mouth and scream for tea parties.
Any idea if a similar situation occurred once states mandated that people had to have car insurance, specifically liability, if they wanted to register their car? And did insurance rates come down as more and more people became insured?
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