Who knew? But it's nice to see it all put together:

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Because it’s not the best we can do. It mandates people purchase private insurance. It is a $70 billion giveaway to private insurance companies and locks in this system that’s the problem, not the solution.

And so, I made every effort, right from the beginning, as you know, as a single-payer advocate. We couldn’t really make this bill single payer; that was taken off the table. But we did something else: We were able to get a bill in the committee passed that would protect the right of states to be able to have—to pursue a not-for-profit healthcare plan at a state level to shield it from legal attack. And that was taken out of the legislation after it had passed. It was taken out by the administration, which has whittled down the public option to the point of not having it truly compete with insurance companies.

So what you have here is people continuing to be at the mercy of the insurance companies, except in this case the government is going to subsidize the policies. People are still going to have premiums, co-pays and deductibles to deal with. And, you know, there’s really a great deal of question here as to what in the world we’re doing in creating a healthcare system that’s really based on the premises of private insurance.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it’s better than what we have now?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: No. Actually, it’s not, because it locks us into a for-profit system that the government subsidizes. It’s not going to save money in the long run. It’s not going to provide the kind of broad healthcare services the American people need. It’s going to limit the choices that people have over a longer period of time. And people will have to buy private insurance. I mean, what’s going on in this country? We’re told that the only choice we have is to buy private insurance, and with the robust public option being gone, it makes sure that there’s little competition with the insurance companies. This bill doesn’t effectively moderate what they can charge for premiums or co-pays or deductibles. It just says people have to have insurance. Well, insurance doesn’t necessarily equate to care, and care comes at a cost.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you compare the public option in the House bill with the Senate bill?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, that remains to be seen. I mean, Senator Baucus has had a couple different iterations. His first bill didn’t have a public option at all.

Keep something in mind. When Mr. Hacker first came out with his proposal for a public option, it was going to cover 129 million Americans. That really would compete in an exchange with private insurance. But that’s been whittled down to, depending on who you talk to, covering six to 11 million people. So only a fraction of Americans will have access to the public option, which means that there’s not effective competition with the insurance companies to drive down rates.

And the Senate, we’ll see what happens in the Senate.

But as far as the House bill that I was confronted with, Amy, I just felt that it increased privatization of the healthcare system. Requiring the purchase of private insurance, the government subsidizing it, it ends up being a redistribution of the wealth of this nation upwards, which lately seems to be the sole purpose of the government.

Thanks, "progressives"!