Health-care bill needs major improvement to be worth passing By Howard Dean*
If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
*The op-ed had a different title before. It was formerly "Kill the Health Bill." They changed it, not me.
Howard Dean, who has come under attack by the White House today, both in second hand comments from reporters and from statements from Gibbs, the press secretary, himself, wrote an op ed in the Washington Post, urging senators to vote against the health insurance bill.
I can't imagine the White House will like this.
There's already an effort underway to discredit him, implying he's not rational and other things.
As Dean says, the White House has decided to screw progressives again and again:
From the very beginning of this debate, progressives have argued that a public option or a Medicare buy-in into would restore competition and hold the private health insurance industry accountable. Progressives understood that a public plan would give Americans real choices about what kind of system they wanted to be in and how they wanted to spend their money. Yet Washington has decided, once again, that the American people cannot be trusted to choose for themselves. Your money goes to insurers, whether or not you want it to.
This bill would kill our election prospects for the next few cycles and probably kill a few more thousand people who still can't get access to health care.
That was me, not Dean.
Dean goes on to list the good points of the bill, while arguing for more changes and more concessions to progressives.
Anyway, it's worth reading.
UPDATE: The DNC just called me asking for a $150 donation. Okay I'm a crippled guy living off SSI at the moment. I would love to have that much money AT ONE TIME, ever. She said that Republicans are stonewalling, blah blah blah, Democratic bills depend on your money.
I asked her a bunch of questions, most of which don't apply to this diary but I asked her about why everyone is attacking Dean today and she said: he's a distraction from the health care bill. He's one of those people who want to start over and we can't do that and he's distracting us and keeping us from our goal.
Really.
As if I weren't mad enough.