Update (15:40 EDT): Ana Marie Cox helpfully corrects/excuses Klein's error re: Kucinich.
Well, that didn't take long. Just a few hours after former Rep. Dick Armey's (R-Tex.) first guest blog post to Time's "Swampland," liberal journalist and author Joe Klein slammed Armey for "red-baiting" the audience on the Democrats' stances on issues like health care.
Socialized medicine is a right-wing scare trope. None of the Democrats is proposing that. None of them is even proposing a "single-payer" plan, like Canada, where the government collects the premiums and people get to choose private providers. And now that we're at a point where much of corporate America is hoping for some relief from the burden of providing health insurance, ain't this kind of red-baiting getting a little old?
But Klein is dead wrong. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is precisely pushing a single-payer universal coverage plan that the liberal Center for American Progress labels as "Medicare for All."
From Kucinich.us, the Ohio Democrat's campaign Web site (PDF file):
We must establish streamlined national health insurance, "Enhanced Medicare for Everyone." It would be publicly financed health care, privately delivered, and will put patients and doctors back in control of the system.
Sounds like Canada to me, and the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund agrees:
The Conyers-Kucinich bill, HR 676, provides for Medicare for All. It is a comprehensive plan which would create a universal, single payer, not-for-profit system which would enable all American families to have full coverage, plus dental, vision, mental health, prescription drugs, and long term care.
