Health care and prescription drugs
From a speech in Florida on March 3, 2004:
My presence in this race in Florida gives the people of Florida a real choice on this health care issue. You can vote for someone who is standing up and saying it is time that our political system showed some backbone and challenged this condition where the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies are holding the American people captive. We have a right to expect a country that will respond to the health care needs of the American people.
I was at the Democratic platform committee four years ago on this issue. I want everyone to hear this, loud and clear. I took a resolution calling for a single-payer, universal, not-for-profit health care system right to the platform committee. And it was immediately shot down. I was told well, these are some of the people who are supporting our party. The insurance interests, we can't go there, we can't support it. Our Democratic party!
What do we stand for as a party, that's the question. We have 43 million Americans who can't afford health insurance. We have millions more who are paying premiums that are going through the roof. Co-pays and deductibles are going up. We have a new kind of poverty in America where people are being driven into poverty because of the high cost of health care. We have so many small businesses who are having trouble surviving because they cannot meet the health care expenses of their employees. All over America this crisis is going on and the two-party system has not been responding to it. That's why my candidacy inside the Democratic party is a call for dramatic change, it's time that we've got away from this rotten for-profit health care system and took it out of the control of the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies!
The pharmaceutical companies had so much power that a couple months ago they worked with the administration to create a so-called prescription drug benefit under Medicare that was a farce because they took the cost controls off of the prescription drugs they're going to charge Medicare exorbitant prices so they can sink Medicare so they can tell the American public "Oh it looks like Medicare is out of money, looks like Medicare doesn't work anymore." This is the game that's being played about health care. Health care has become an engine for redistributing the wealth of America upwards. Out of all of your pockets and into the hands of the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies.
So it is time for universal, single-payer, not-for-profit, national health care plan called Medicare for All. It is time to cover everyone in this country and see health care as a basic right in America. So this campaign is continuing so that the people of Florida will have a real choice come the Tuesday election. And it's a choice that focuses on peace, on health care for all, on education for all, on jobs for all, and a clean environment. I'm staying in this race to make sure that Florida has a real choice in this election.
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