I agree with most of what Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) says in this video interview on Tech Ticker about health reform, i.e., the public option is dead; healthcare is a right; and “the people of the United States deserve a lot better” than the Baucus bill. Notes Kucinich:
Unless you have a public option, there is no way that you can drive down the cost of healthcare because insurance companies won’t have any competition.
Kucinich also argues that the U.S. should work toward a long-term goal of establishing a single-payer system:
It’s a longer term effort, but at least we’re not pretending that we’re bringing about wide-scale reform by forcing people to choose between private insurance companies.
As I’ve noted before, I have no problem with going to single-payer; however, I also think a properly regulated public-private insurance market could work.
I’m not sure what Kucinich is referring to in the video when he says that a single-payer system would convert all healthcare assets in the U.S. to not-for-profit — or that by going to single-payer we could use the $800 billion a year that goes to private insurance companies to pay for coverage for everyone.
(I called — and emailed — Kucinich’s office but hadn’t received a reply before presstime).
On the later point, he would be correct in noting that about 13% of the $800 billion in annual health plan premiums go toward administrative costs and profits. That’s $100 billion annually or $1 trillion over 10 years.
Add in the additional administrative savings on the provider side from not having to deal with multiple insurers, and yes that should be more than enough to cover everyone.
Btw, kudos to Tech Ticker for giving a single-payer guy some airtime.
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