Dean's op ed with The Hill today. Replace the guy who does health care.

[madfloridian]

http://www.thehill.com/op_ed/072604.aspx

SNIP..."Our healthcare system is sick — let’s replace the guy who runs it"
By Howard Dean

In the richest, most advanced country in the world in the 21st century, it’s simply wrong for sick children to go without seeing a doctor because their parents cannot afford it. It is wrong for a woman to find out she has late-stage breast cancer because she couldn’t afford a mammogram. It is wrong for seniors to have to choose between prescriptions they need and putting food on the table.

The time has come to make healthcare for all Americans a reality..."

SNIP..."I am supporting John Kerry for president because he has a real and realistic plan to hold down costs and cover the uninsured without raising taxes on the middle class or putting in place a big government bureaucracy. He would let everyday Americans buy into the same great healthcare plan that the president and members of Congress get, and he would help working families and small-business owners afford the costs....."

[Cha]

1. You go Dr Dean! It is wrong!

But what the hell do these people in power care?

I love the way Clinton made the references to the tax cuts he gets now from the repubs who are caring so well for him when they were so mean to him while he was in office.

[eridani]

2. Fine to campaign on, weak as strategy

Gets people pissed that they are paying for health care for congresscritters that they themselves can't get.

However, the fact that private insurers run this program dooms it. They don't mind insuring congresscritters, or for that matter pools of employed adults. Why? Because people in those risk pools are significantly healthier than the population in general, that's why.

Don't know where anyone gets the idea that these private companies are going to tolerate having the precious bodily fluids of their privileged risk pools all contaminated with a bunch of goddam actual sick people, at least not without jacking up the premiums significantly.

As to government bureaucracies, Canada has fewer bureaucrats serving the whole country than Blue Cross alone has in a single small state---Massachusetts.