Kerry: Health plan would not mean U.S. takeover

[True_Blue]

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - John Kerry trumpeted his health care program Tuesday as a recipe to bring down soaring medical costs, rejecting Republican contentions that a Democratic plan would mean a government takeover.

"I want to make it very clear what my health care plan is and what it isn't. My health care plan is not a government plan," Kerry told voters at a Toledo senior center.

"You choose your own doctor. You choose your own plan. You choose not to be part of what I offer? Your choice."

Earlier, Kerry told a group of elderly voters in Milwaukee, "I have no new bureaucracy at all in my program."

more....

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/09/15/build/nation/75-kerry-health-plan.inc

[tedzbear]

1. So he means he is on the same page as Bush????

* wants to privatize everything he can.

[aquart]

2. Damn shame, that.

And a touch naive.

[sybylla]

3. So essentially the "plan" is status quo.

I wouldn't call that anything worth discussing.

[shrike]

4. Not really

Go to Kerry's website and read about it. Krugman compared the two plans and found Kerry's the better one, albeit highly imperfect.

The trouble with this country is people equate "socialized medicine" with communism. It's a bogeyman.

I respected Howard Dean for telling the truth in one of his meetings: He wouldn't push for a single-payer health plan because "it wouldn't pass. I want something that will pass." And he's right.

[Monte Carlo]

5. There's no reason some public corporation can't step in...

... and put the other HMO's to shame by providing the same drugs, treatments, procedures, etc., with the efficiency and money pool that a nationwide program would provide.