Reading the clueless support for him in this forum reveals why: ALL of you are far too quick to blame capitalism itself for our helthcare crisis, and loudly shout that interfering with capitalism is the only solution.

But in the social sciences, there are few facts as sound as this: interfering with the law of supply and demand inevitably either raises costs or forces rationing of supply.

We ALREADY have both in our health care market. The public believes Kucinich and his plans will only make it worse. THAT is why they are content to let the lobbyists get away with this rather than follow Kucinich’s call.

Finally, even that scary clause on p22, allowing a 25% increase, might not be as bad as he says: they are, after all, submitting to alot of regulation to get that 25% increase, that regulation is in turn designed to make sure we actually get more complete coverage for our premiums.

The problem is, of course, that this too is interference with the law of supply and demand, so it too runs the risk of only driving up costs.

Finally, don’t let the ‘progressives’ fool you: one of the reasons Europeans get away with paying less is that the pharmaceutical industry — both US and European — has been financing the expensive drug development process with profits from the US.

That’s right. We have been subsidizing drug development. So what happens when those funds dry up?

I work in health care (40+ years) and Representative Kucinich is absolutely right about the massive increase in “administrators” versus doctors and other health care people. We have more billing people than we have nurses, spending hundreds of thousands of hours per year trying to squeeze money out of insurance companies for the services we render. This all started when they began having for-profit insurance companies (or buzzards) the only goal of which is to hold on to enough money to pay their CEOs millions of dollars in salaries. (Check out the Daily Kos, for one, on compensation for Health Insurance Execs).

We have 12 doctors in my clinic and I can guarantee you their combined salaries do not equal that of the one CEO of the insurance company we use for the employees, whose annual pay last time I looked was about $12 million in base pay and about another $10-12 million in perks. OF COURSE health care costs have been going up!

I won’t even venture into a discussion about the “masters and commanders” of the female reproductive system: the religious right and the roman catholic church. The whole thing is a farce.

The Obama administration has received my very last dime and my very last vote.

Answer: the political primary system; but that’s an entirely separate issue.

Standard rates in the individual market are higher than in the group market. Chances are they can raise most rates more than 25 percent, especially once they raise individual rates before the bill takes effect. Buy Aetna, Humana, and United Health Care.

BTW. Be wary of the Medicare fee structure. It too benefits drug companies and device makers and users. If Medicare rates were standard for everything, the doctors you don’t see, the cardiologists putting stents into coronary arteries and the surgeons, will do just fine. The doctors you need to see, the family practice doc, the pediatrician, the general internist, the psychiatrist, will be out of business.

That’s why I’m very disappointed with Kucinich’s vote–it was a vote for the status quo, with 45,000,000 people uninsured. So, no kudos from me–rather, brickbats.

The fact that they hate this bill should tell us something.