Howard Dean Urges Lawmakers to Kill Health Care Bill and Start Over

Health Care Bill 'Bigger Bailout for the Insurance Industry Than AIG'

By HUMA KHAN and JONATHAN KARL
ABC News
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16, 2009—

President Obama said he likes the Senate health care compromise and wants it passed by Christmas, but he faces a revolt from liberals who say the health care bill has been gutted to appease insurance companies.

"This is a bigger bailout for the insurance industry than AIG," former Democratic National Committee chairman and medical doctor Howard Dean told "Good Morning America's" George Stephanopoulos today. "A very small number of people are going to get any insurance at all, until 2014, if the bill works."

"This is an insurance companies' dream, this bill," Dean added. "This is the Washington scramble and I think it's ill-advised."

Dean sent shockwaves when he said Tuesday in an interview with Vermont Public Radio that the removal of the Medicare buy-in means Democrats should just kill the health care bill and start over.

"This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate," Dean said. "Honestly, the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill."

The former Democratic presidential candidate argues that in the rush to pass a health care bill, lawmakers have essentially stripped it of true reforms -- mainly the choices it would give to people -- and given too much to special interest groups and insurance companies, the chief executives of which, Dean says, would get 27 percent of the money Americans contribute.

(More here.)