Dems split on health care, trade

Dems split on health care, trade
By William L. Watts, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 1:01 AM ET Aug. 6, 2003

CHICAGO (CBS.MW) -- Competing prescriptions for reforming the nation's health care system highlighted divisions between the nine Democratic presidential candidates at an AFL-CIO forum Tuesday night
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Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said his plan to rescind all of Bush's tax cuts would pay for the expansion of health insurance to uninsured Americans while also allowing the federal budget to return to balance within five years.

Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, defended his plan calling for the rollback of all of the Bush tax cuts, which, along with a 60 percent tax credit to employers, would be used to expand health insurance to uninsured Americans.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio said neither plan was workable and that the only solution was to admit that "the private sector has failed" and that it was time to aim for a government-run, single-payer health insurance system funded by a 7.5 percent payroll tax increase on employers.

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Sen. John Kerry then accused Lieberman of thinking small. "America deserves a bigger and bolder vision than Joe just described," Kerry said, touting his own plan to target rising health-care costs and extend insurance to all Americans.


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http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BB136B571-1ABD-4685-A04E-D0386AC43AF0%7D&siteid=google&dist=google

:D

Question for Kucinich fans...article says "single-payer health insurance system funded by a 7.5 percent payroll tax ".

Does than mean he wants to increase the current payroll tax from the current 15.3% (1/2 paid by employer, 1/2 paid by employee up to about $80K salary cap) to 16.4475%? (15.3% x 1.075)...if so, that seems pretty reasonable...

or is he going to increase the tax to 22.8% (15.3% + 7.5%, which has a snowballs chance in hell of happening).

Is he proposing keeping the phaseout at the 82K or so?

What are the details please...thanks.

http://www.kucinich.us/issues/issue_universalhealth.htm

We had state single payer health care on the ballot in Oregon, it was a voluntary plan. It went down something like 60/40, but still got more support than I thought it would. It wasn't even widely promoted. That plan had business paying some and the employee paying some and the percentage seemed higher than the 7.5%, but I could be wrong on that.

Anyway, I think the reason it went down was more due to a lack of trust in government to manage the thing than the actual cost. If we could really get national health care at 7.5%, then that means a mom & pop could provide insurance to a $1200 mo. employee at only $90. That is a heck of a deal and I think most businesses would gladly do that. I just think people don't have any trust in government run health care. They look at the VA, county hospitals, medicaid, medicare and say 'I don't want that'. Plus they don't think it would stay at an affordable rate anyway because nothing ever does. So I don't know if we'll ever get to single payer in this country.

He is excellent at idenifying issues of failure but lacks adequate, realiatic soulutions. I think he lacks leadership worthy of the level of president. I know we have scrub....that was a con job......

Kucinich is inspiring.....but now we need a taskmaster.

Brown said that there's no reason that health care should be bound to employment and that the money already is in the system.
Sharpton said that it is a human right - he was the best at framing all the issues.
As for free trade, besides myself not believing in isolationism, I hated the Lazio moment in wich DK asked everyone to sign the repeal Nafta commitment. (Rick Lazio tried a trick like this with Hillary - after that debate, with all the Ruslut help, the numbers switched dramatically to Hillary).
Someone forgot to tell DK that this was a Forum, not a debate.