Dear former Kucinich supporter,
I found that a significant difference between Paul and Kucinich was found in their respective healthcare approaches. I have to admit that I found Dr. Paul's approach to be significantly less aggressive, and I may agree with you that spiraling costs, and a rising number of people with no healthcare are two of the many things crippling our country.
I did look at H.R. 676 and found it to be lacking in four noticeable spots which I will share.
1st: Particular wording that did not specify U.S. citizens. "All individuals RESIDING in the United States" is from the full text of the bill. (caps are mine)
I just figured that this was not a big deal and details will follow, however later there are a few references to "migrant health facilities" which were not explained fully.
I took these inclusions to mean healthcare for non-citizens.
One might think that opposition on these grounds is harsh to people coming here illegally yearning to be free, but I don't feel that way.
Currently the President of Mexico is Felipe Calderón, he won by a shady 0.58%.
Under the admittedly false assumption that all illegal immigrants are from Mexico, the people who should be voting in the country of their birth, making a better country for themselves, are living as second-class citizens in the U.S. -Felipe Calderón can count on this, and does not have to address the needs of an estimated 15% of Mexico's workforce -because they are in the U.S., not voting against flaws (like Felipe Calderón?) in their own country.
Delivering healthcare to a consistently failing Mexico doesn't help us or them.
Even if we could afford it.
2nd: United States National Health Insurance Card -as mentioned in the bill, is a national I.D. card, with all of it's "national I.D. cardy" baggage.
Canadians have provincial cards (non-national), they restrict non-citizens from their healthcare system with them, cards may eliminate my earlier concern about non-citizens, but it most certainly is NOT mentioned that way in H.R. 676.
3rd: (from text of HR 676) "COMPENSATION FOR CONVERSION- The owners of such investor-owned providers shall be compensated for the actual appraised value of converted facilities used in the delivery of care."
This section is a poorly constructed massive nationalization of private assets that I have yet to see funded in this bill.
Michael Moore may think that Cuba produces better healthcare outcomes than the U.S., and he may be right, but Cuba had a pretty rough time getting there!
4th, and last: H.R. 676 is a very small document with so many unanswered/poorly resolved questions I found myself having a hard time taking it seriously.
The recently passed Wetlands Preservation Act's documentation might be ten times the size of HR676, yet it addresses a much smaller task requiring SIGNIFICANTLY less money and upheaval than national healthcare.
There are 37 other countries on this planet doing a better job delivering healthcare than the U.S. -Of all the 37 models that could have been consulted, HR 676 decides to poorly re-invent the wheel.
Where Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich may meet on this is in the re-empowering of individual states to create their own workable solutions to this and many other challenges that have been poorly handled by federal bureaucracies, and lobbyists in D.C.
One of the supposed strengths of having individual states is that they can serve themselves as "individual experiments in democracy".
One of my personal complaints about Ron Paul's candidacy is that it does not emphasize the strength of empowering states enough. No other candidate even mentions state's rights, unless they want to blow off a question about same-sex marriage.
-You may have noticed a pattern among some of the former state governors running this year in claiming that their DIFFERENT approaches have addressed concerns in their own states -I don't live in their respective states, and you may not either. (you may or may not want to!)
Ron Paul has NEVER said that your state(or mine) will be restrained from determining it's own healthcare policies. This would be the OPPOSITE of what he has said.
He HAS said that he personally feels socialized medicine is a bad idea, but more importantly that it is not the job of the federal government to make that determination.
Ron Paul has not offered any bold NATIONAL healthcare initiative, he has also failed to produce a bold NATIONAL program to tell your city where to put parking meters! -and that's okay!
I believe that your state has proven itself to be more positively concerned about healthcare than a D.C. lobbyist for an insurance company, for many reasons. I believe this about my state as well.
My support of Ron Paul recognizes that many of the 37 different countries currently doing better on healthcare than us are similar in size to some U.S. states.
Rather than have an insurance fueled, federal boondoggle determining healthcare, I'd like for your state to reach toward some of the successes on this planet. Hopefully my state will eventually join you!
But in the meantime...
Perhaps you would like to consult ANY other candidate for president this year, or perhaps even this century, for their forward looking vision on healthcare?
If you should find anything interesting between "we just have to streamline the billing process with technology", and "while you were on the board of directors for Wal-Mart" -please drop me a line!
The big difference between Ron Paul, and Dennis Kucinich is that Ron is perfectly fine with Dennis trying out HR 676 in Ohio, but Dennis wanted to put it forward on a whole country that is obviously not sure about it.
Welcome aboard!
Ron Paul '08
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