Dennis Kucinich for President

(Once you stop gasping or snickering, let me know and I'll explain.  Are you done?  Good.)

First, let me start by saying that I believe Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards are all good candidates.  One of them will, in all likelihood, be the Democratic nominee for president and will have an excellent shot at succeeding Bush.

I will, in all likelihood support the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she may be, because there is no way I can find anything remotely appealing about the Republican field.

Primaries, however, are about what you believe in.  What should be.  Elections are about what it is.

When I first looked at the entire Democratic field, I instantly gravitated towards Bill Richardson for the same reasons many people did: loads of experience in the legislative and executive, so he wouldn't be a "President-in-Training" like Obama will if he's elected; former Secretary of Energy at a time when we need to pursue alternative energy sources and we have to work with the rest of the world at reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases; and he had diplomatic experience at a time when the rest of the world has a less-than-flattering perception of the U.S.

As I noted here, Richardson committed way too many blunders and really let me down.

So, as I looked at the rest of the field, I asked myself what were the main issues facing the U.S.

Iraq was the first issue I thought of.  Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate who voted against authorizing the Iraq war, unlike Edwards and Clinton.  Moreover, he's the only candidate who has voted against every request to continue to fund the Iraq war, unlike Obama and Clinton. More than a year ago, he outlined a way out of Iraq (it's too long to post here but you can check it out).  That plan can still be put in effect today.  And it makes more sense than anything else I've seen out there from the right and the left.

Health Care is also a key issue in a country where about 46 million people lack health insurance.  Again, Kucinich proposes a plan that would put the focus back where it belongs: on providing coverage and not on protecting profits. 

America's patchwork of for-profit, private insurers waste billions of dollars on spending that has nothing to do with paying for care. Elaborate underwriting, billing, sales and marketing divert huge amounts of money away from delivering health care.

To cope with the endless bureaucracy of private insurers, health care providers maintain huge administrative staffs. The administration of the health care system today consumes approximately 31% of the money spent for health care. The potential savings, as much as $350 billion per year, are enough to provide comprehensive coverage to every American without paying any more than we already do.

In Congress, Representative Dennis Kucinich has co-authored HR 676, legislation which would establish Medicare for All - a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care system that leaves no American behind.

No other candidate comes close to this.

My third main issue is Energy and the Environment.  Again, Kucinich has the right ideas.

As the world population soars towards eight billion, critical issues of survival face all of us. Living on a planet of finite resources means that human life can not be sustained indefinitely without careful thought and compassion coupled with political courage.

While the catastrophic impact of global warming is well documented, the U.S. has yet to rejoin the Kyoto Treaty. A Kucinich administration would immediately put the United States in the forefront of solving the global warming crisis by rejoining the Kyoto accord and implementing its recommendations. On the domestic front, I am an original co-sponsor in the House of Representatives of HR 1950, the Safe Climate Act of 2007. This is an act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the climate introduced by Rep. Henry Waxman of California. As President I will continue to support the goals and targets of this important piece of legislation.

More recently, Dennis attended the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, advocating a plan with Mikhail Gorbachev for a Global Green Deal that would enable the introduction of $50 billion of new solar projects around the world. It will be a major initiative to use our country's leadership in sustainable energy production to provide jobs to Americans, to reduce energy use here at home, and to partner with developing nations to provide their people with inexpensive, local renewable-energy technologies.

The United States under a Kucinich presidency would reverse the unsustainable actions in the following areas: 1) Energy consumption 2) Military spending 3) Economic and tax policy 4) Environmental policy 5) Land and water use.

Most telling is his support for water use and availability, particularly at a time when a major city like Atlanta, GA is facing running out of water.

All water shall be considered to be forever in the public domain. It shall be the duty of each nation to provide accessible, affordable drinking water to its peoples. There shall be public ownership of drinking water systems, subject to municipal control Wealthy nations shall provide poor nations with the means to obtain water for survival. Water shall be protected from commodification and exempted from all trade agreements. Water privatization shall not be a condition of debt restructuring, loan renewal or loan forgiveness. Governments shall use their powers to prevent private aggregation of water rights. Water shall be conserved through sustainable agriculture and encouraging plant-based diets. Water resources shall be protected from pollution. Our children should be educated about the essential nature of water for maintaining life.

Those are my three main issues, and after looking at what the other Democrats have to offer, Kucinich's positions stand out as bold and unique.  That is not to say that's all Kucinich stands for.  His position on securing constitutional democracy, survival of the middle class, end to poverty, and saving capitalism are just as compelling and as distinct from the Obama/Edwards/Clinton positions.

He's the real thing if you want real change.

Now, why will I vote for someone who doesn't have a snowflake's chance in hell of winning the nomination, let alone winning the election?

Because I think he's right.  I don't need Bill O'Reilly or Chris Matthews, or Tim Russert, or Ann Coulter, or Keith Olbermann to tell me what to think or to tell me what matters.  I no longer believe in "left-center-right."  I stopped believing that something is "good" because X group proposes it or that something is "bad" because Y group proposes it.  I believe that if you have a problem, your solution should be whatever solves the problem quickest and more effectively.

Take health care, for example.  If your concern is "coverage" then look for the solution that will give you "coverage."  A universal, single payer, not-for-profit system does that in many democratic Western countries.  There's no reason it should not work here.  And it's the private, for-profit system that has left 46 million Americans without coverage.

In a nutshell, I think Kucinich has the right ideas and the right vision for the future of the U.S. and the world.

That's why I'm voting for him.  Even if the pundits tell me I'm crazy.

Tags: Elections 2008, Politics, Democrats

Comments

[La Ventanita]

Loco, the problem is not coverage that is the symptom; the problem is the rising cost of healthcare. That is what should be attacked - lowering the cost of going to the doctor, of getting medicines, of hospitals.

Giving insurance to everybody is a patch. Lowering/regulating healthcare costs is the solution.

I have no clue who I'm voting for; RI is a closed primary so I have to pick from the Rep field - right know Freddy is the one coming close to getting my vote.

[HispanicPundit]

Interesting... I've always wondered how anybody could take Kucinich seriously. Given that you do, maybe we can have a discussion on why?

Since healthcare is the concern of the day, let me comment on that. You write,

Take health care, for example. If your concern is "coverage" then look for the solution that will give you "coverage." A universal, single payer, not-for-profit system does that in many democratic Western countries. There's no reason it should not work here. And it's the private, for-profit system that has left 46 million Americans without coverage.

I am curious, since you seem to be praising the "not-for-profit system" of other democratic Western countries, is there any drawbacks you see of moving towards their version of healthcare? I mean, in your mind, is this really a free lunch where we gain much and lose little to nothing? I am just trying to get a feel for how deeply you have delved into this topic before moving forward.

[El Loco]

LV, currently it's the health insurance companies who are responsible for most of the spiraling cost of health care. Under a single-payer system, a good portion of those costs are eliminated or significantly reduced.

Fred Thompson? I'm looking forward to reading your rationale on your website (or here if you don't want to be bothered with a full blog entry on Freddy.)

HP, I never said there's a free lunch anywhere. And, no, I don't think there aren't any drawbacks to single-payer. After all, I'm a firm believer that if anyone tells you they have the perfect solution to a problem you should run the other way.

That said, and since we could be talking about this for a long time, I'll refer you to this link to let you know where I'm coming from.

http://www.amsa.org/pdf/model.pdf

It is not - and does not pretend to be - an "objective" site in that AMSA supports single payer. However, it's very candid about the benefits and drawbacks of each system that could be used to deliver universal health care.

[La Ventanita]

Loco, I'll try to make a post; but it's really quite simple. He appears to be the only true Republican of the bunch committed to lower taxes, reducing federal intrusion while giving back states their autonomy, reduced spending, homeland security and border security.

Secondplace, Romeny. Huckfinn looks more like a Democrat. And forget about McCain, we've never seen things the same way.

The choices are not good at all; for my beliefs and for the Republican principles Freddy is the only viable candidate.

[El Loco]

I have to give you props, LV. You're going for principles over electability.

[La Ventanita]

Always Loco. As you said, that is what primaries are for.

Now come the general election, then we'll see who the heck I vote for.

[HispanicPundit]

Thanks for the link. I read the first two sections on single-payer. After reading the article though, it struck me on how much it downplays the problems and exaggerates the benefits of single payer healthcare. Check out this and this for the other side.

In short, the trade-off between single-payer and our current private sector healthcare is not between good and evil as the Kucinich's of the world like to portray it, but a trade off between greater health care coverage vs. greater medical innovation and access to healthcare. Also, given that the United States is the world leader in medical innovation - both in technology and pharmaceutical drugs, this is a very expensive trade off to make (would you really give up some life saving drugs and technologies just to give more people - many of whom currently choose not to get it themselves - more healthcare?)...and, more importantly, one that does not have to be made - atleast not at the level requested by single-pay advocates. This is why you get 'tweaks' to our medical industry by politically palpable politicians. They seem to understand this trade off better than the utopianism that permeates the Kucinichs of the world.

This illustrates why I can't understand how anybody could take Kucinich seriously. The further you go into a topic, healthcare in this case, the more you realize that Kucinich either does not understand the issue or is blinded by his economically illiterate views.

Btw, I agree with the commenter La Ventanita...as a rightie, if I had it my way, Fred Thompson would be the Republican of choice.

[El Loco]

HP,

I really did you a disservice because I gave you a link that only tells part of the story.

Here's the other one.

http://www.amsa.org/uhc/IHSprimer.pdf

I disagree that this is a trade-off between coverage vs. innovation and access. And this isn't an issue of just getting everybody covered "because it's a good thing." First,it is counter-intuitive to believe that a person who has the knowledge and means to purchase health insurance will not do so. There may be cases like that, but it is more likely the exception rather than the rule.

Second, I have a problem with this premise:

Medical insurance, whether private or government, is always going to be faced with a fundamental problem: patients and doctors will try to get the most out of any system. When they aren’t paying directly, patients will seek extra care and doctors will be happy to oblige. To deal with that problem, health care systems can offer services indiscriminately and write off the resulting losses, spend money on monitoring, or limit services and prices. An analogous problem is faced by retail stores: they must either put up with theft, hire security to limit theft, or carry lower-value items.

Patients really have no incentive to seek "extra care." Either you're healthy or your not. And if you're healthy you're not going to seek medical care, particularly if, to stay consistent with your arguments, you have to put up with extended waiting times. Second, that assumes that there would be no cost controls in place, which is not part of any single-payer universal care in the world. Third, saying that people "wouldn't be paying for themselves" is completely inaccurate. We would all be paying for it. Just like, one way or another, we're all paying for every person that is treated at the ER because he/she doesn't have health insurance and doesn't have enough money to pay the medical bill.

Not done with this, but I'm done for today!

.

[HispanicPundit]

I disagree that this is a trade-off between coverage vs. innovation and access.

Well it is. This makes sense too if you factor in that a single-pay healthcare system will no longer include (or greatly diminish) that "evil" for-profit aspect of healthcare. Remember, it is precisely the for-profit motive that gives us innovations and with time makes them accessible to everybody. As they say, capitalism makes the luxuries of the rich (with time) the necessities of the poor. This is the way it is with all for-profit sectors, be it automotive, computer, clothing and yes, pharmaceutical and medical. You remove that for-profit motive, you remove innovation.

The problem is exasperated when you include the fact that under a single-pay healthcare system it will be politicians - through taxation - that will fund healthcare. As any politician will tell you, there is one thing that the citizenry absolutely hates and that is tax increases. So under a single-pay system you will have a strong incentive to keep costs (Read: money for R&D) down.

This is especially harmful as pharmaceutical and medical equipment breakthroughs usually begin by benefiting a very small group of people at a very high cost (making it the least politically beneficially for politicians to support more funding). Under a for-profit system this is not a problem as the very rich and those with better health coverage will pay for the innovation anyway and this will result in, like all other things under a for-profit system, a reduction in price and eventually lead to it being used by those further on down the economic ladder. But under a single-pay healthcare system this is a grave problem as politicians will have a strong incentive to keep costs down (eliminating "unnecessary"- read: "politically unfeasable" - innovations).

This is not mere classroom theory, this is the way it is in the real world. It is no coincidence (though single-pay healthcare advocates will have you believe otherwise) that the United States produces a disproportionately large number of medical breakthroughs and technology. You make the United States healthcare system single-pay, you kill the goose that lays the golden egg - the last goose too, as the rest of the world gets their medical and technological breakthroughs primarily from us.

First,it is counter-intuitive to believe that a person who has the knowledge and means to purchase health insurance will not do so. There may be cases like that, but it is more likely the exception rather than the rule.

It is not counter-intuitive when you take into account precisely who those people are. Greg Mankiw writes (I highly recommend the full article as well):

"To start with, the 47 million includes about 10 million residents who are not American citizens. Many are illegal immigrants. Even if we had national health insurance, they would probably not be covered.

The number also fails to take full account of Medicaid. the government’s health program for the poor. For instance, it counts millions of the poor who are eligible for Medicaid but have not yet applied. These individuals, who are healthier, on average, than those who are enrolled, could always apply if they ever needed significant medical care. They are uninsured in name only.

The 47 million also includes many who could buy insurance but haven’t. The Census Bureau reports that 18 million of the uninsured have annual household income of more than $50,000, which puts them in the top half of the income distribution. About a quarter of the uninsured have been offered employer-provided insurance but declined coverage".

Many more are probably recent college graduates in their early 20's who don't need healthcare and would rather have it in the form of higher pay than in a coverage they will rarely use.

You also write, Patients really have no incentive to seek "extra care." Either you're healthy or your not.

Of course nobody is going to go to the doctors 'just for fun', so in that sense you are correct. But when people refer to excessive healthcare, what economists call the moral hazard problem of healthcare, they don't have in their minds someone who wakes up one morning and says, "Gee, it'd be fun to go hang out in the emergency room today", no, they have in mind someone who is more likely to push for unnecessary and extremely expensive tests. To use an extreme example, say you go to the doctors office and based on your age you have a 1/1,000,000 chance of having some rare disease and the test for that disease is extremely expensive. If you are not paying for that test directly, and the doctor also makes money in performing that test (which is the case today, a performance based pay structure for doctors) you and the doctor have the incentive to perform that test...even though doing so is clearly not beneficial given any cost/benefit analysis. This is the fundamental problem that Cowen is speaking about above and it is a fundamental problem in all systems. Patients and doctors are always going to want to perform more tests than are necessary and there has to be some point, some [(probability of being useful)*(expense)] cost at which point one is refused the test.

Under single-pay healthcare systems they simply tell you no and define "excessive" and "unnecessary" much more stringently than we do here in the United States. But the definition is somewhat arbitrary and dependent on the whims of politicians and since refusing expensive procedures, again back to the innovation problem, reduces the incentive to innovate, that solution is less than ideal. Economists from the left and the right have proposed a much better alternative, and that is to make those who can afford healthcare to pay for it out of pocket, thereby removing the hidden costs and making people decide for themselves what procedure is "worth it". This is why economists on all sides tend to be for removing the tax break employers get for providing healthcare to their employees. This will push more companies to pay their employees a single wage that includes salary and healthcare costs and leaves the health insurance options (much like car insurance, home insurance, and how all other insurances are currently done) in the hands of the employee. See more here.

Again, this is not mere classroom theory. This is one of the most widely studied areas of healthcare. In fact, the gold standard on this topic is the RAND study (see here) where they took a large segment of people and separated them into two groups. One group had the same subsidized hidden cost health insurance we have now (and would have even more so under single-pay) and the other group had a health insurance that demanded much more co-payments and contributions from those who can afford it...and the result? An insignificant difference in healthcare results but a HUGE reduction in costs.

One final note before ending: is there an area of healthcare that has been improving in quality yet reducing in costs? Yes, and that area is laser eye surgery (an area where I have been the beneficiary, btw). What do we see with laser eye surgery that we do not see with other healthcare related areas? It is precisely laser eye surgery that is not covered by health insurance (and company coverage) and where the costs are most borne out by those directly using the service. In other words, it works in precisely the opposite way that single-pay advocates propose - yet it gives us the best of both worlds, low costs and high in innovation.

[Jane]

Sounds like you've done your research Roberto ;-) I had not heard of Kucinich. He sounds like he's got his priorities straight from what you've written here though. I really appreciate the fact that you can publicly say who will get your vote. Its normal for Canadians to let you know who they vote for, but it seems more often than not, at least the Americans I asked about whether or not they elected Bush, were unwilling to answer. Personally, I would like to see Obama as your next president. I think he has the right people behind him and I believe a president or prime minister is only as good as his advisors. I mean, look at the idiot in charge of Canada right now. He's just plain embarrassing if you ask me. I guess anyone would be better as president than you-know-who though. What a mess that man has made! I really don't know how many future presidents it will take to clean up his mess.

[Melek]

Roberto,

Looking forward to a new post! I have been looking at this photo of Kucinich for so long now, that I'm starting to see UFOs on his tie! LOL!! ;)

I wish you well :) Melek

"Voting is one of the few things where boycotting in protest clearly makes the problem worse rather than better." ~ Unknown