Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) argued that Republican efforts to repeal the healthcare law could actually open the door for a single-payer system favored by liberals.





Appearing on Fox News on Friday, Kucinich fired back against charges that caps on how insurance companies spend their premium dollars would put jobs at risk on the brokerage side of the industry.

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"The bottom line is: they're going to make whatever pleas they can to try to cut the limitations that are coming in place in this new bill," he said. "But the fact of the matter is, beyond all of this is that we really have to move someday towards a not-for-profit system where the insurance companies aren't dictating the kind of health care we're going to have in America."

Kucinich said that Republican efforts to starve the new healthcare law could inadvertently push the country toward a single-payer system.

"If you demolish the new bill and we go back to square one, you still have 50 million who don't have any coverage, then what's the option if you can't have the government, say, by private insurance, which -- believe me, as someone would has fought that system I understand that -- then the only other option is to say what other industrialized democracies say, healthcare is a basic right, we've got to provide for everyone, we'll have a single-payer system," the congressman said.

"So, my Republican friends who are working very hard to demolish the bill, may, in fact, inadvertently, paradoxically be creating the opening to push single-payer forward again," he said.

