VOWS TO CONTINUE THE FIGHT AS CRISIS ACCELERATES.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 23 March, 2010

Contact: Daryl Sprague, 617-459-0784

LEXINGTON, Massachusetts – Jill Stein, Green-Rainbow Party candidate for governor, described the health care bill passed by Congress Sunday as lobbyists’ legislation which offers few benefits at staggering cost. She warned Massachusetts residents to brace for skyrocketing prices and an accelerating health care meltdown, and vowed to renew her push for “real solutions.”

Here are her remarks, made in a speech to supporters during a teleconference Tuesday morning:

“The health reform passed on Sunday is not the solution the American people have been looking for, but rather a triumph of business-as-usual. It will bankrupt individuals and local governments by forcing them to buy the expensive policies in a health-care system designed to exploit instead of to serve. Starting today, we begin the real battle to move beyond this costly non-solution and replace it with the health care system America needs.

In shaping this bill, the Democratic Party excluded the cost control measures that would truly reduce the price of health care. They excluded the public option, Medicare buy-in, drug price negotiation, and expanding use of generic medications. Without such effective cost controls, our individual premiums are going up. And our taxes are going up to pay for health coverage for government workers.

This bill is almost identical to a plan that the insurance company lobbyists released back in 2009. It’s no wonder that their stock prices have shot up 28% since Congress released it first health reform bills.

We’ve been told that “Something is better than nothing.” A few features of the bill are indeed positive, but these could easily have been enacted without being attached to this massive mess of a bill.

Now the real battle for health care reform begins anew, with the people who understand that health care profiteering is at the root of our problems, and that the current system needs fundamental change. The Democratic and Republican Parties – who let the insurance companies write this legislation – are protectors of the status quo – not reformers. They put on a great show of arguing with each other, but neither is willing to do what it takes to come up with a real solution. It’s time for the American people, who have so much at stake, to take the lead in this struggle.

Any discussion of reform must include the one solution that has been proven again and again to work – an “improved Medicare for All”, or single-payer system. This key reform can cover everyone, lower our health care costs, and get the private insurance companies out of the business of telling doctors and patients what they can and can’t do. We know it works because it is working in many developed countries around the world, which pay half as much as we do per person and have better health to show for it.

Democrats will certainly lose votes as a result of enacting this boondoggle. But it would be a mistake to consider the loud complaints coming from Republicans as meaning that they have a viable solution. They have shown no intention of reining in insurance company abuses or moving us beyond health care profiteering. The insurance companies will laugh all the way to the bank if people vote Republican to protest the Democratic Party sell-out. That’s why the Green Party is key to solving the health care crisis. Since we’re not taking money from the health insurance companies, we can tell it like it is, and offer real solutions. Every Green vote in November will send a clear message to put people’s health ahead of satisfying the health insurance lobbyists.”

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