Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Alan Simpson: On Starting to Cut Health Care Costs

Former Senator Alan Simpson blasts John Kerry at the "Super Committee" (aka, the Joint Deficit Reduction Committe) hearing yesterday regarding health care costs:
"We just knew that whatever you call it, if you want to use the negatives and call it Obamacare or any kind of care you want to, it won't work. It can't work because all you have to do is use common sense. You have this emplosion of people, you have diabetes, you have one person in America that weighs more than the other two, you got guys who choose tobacco, choose booze, choose to use designer drugs, and all of them will be taken care of. You've got pre-existing conditions in three year-olds - what happens throught their sixty, or fifty, years of life? All you have to do is forget the charts and know that if you torture statistics long enough they will eventually confess and know that this country cannot exist on any kind of situation where a guy who could buy this buidling gets a $150,000 heart operation and doesn't even get a bill. Now that's nuts and that's where we are in America. No affluence testing. You gotta raise co-pays, you gotta knock down providers, you gotta deal with physicians, you gotta have hospitals keep one set of books instead of two - that will be a start."
Here's the video:



Be sure to see former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles add his two cents, too.

You have to wonder: is anybody listening?

-Wes

h/t: Kaiser Health News

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Obviously not Doc,

I watched the meeting and heard all the common and uncommon speach, but it wasn't even shown on the evening news.

Simpson left early as he had to catch a plane, if it was one of the "supercommittee" they would fly free out of Andrews AFB don't ya think?

Anonymous said...

Simpson is arguing for "death panels" and increased revenue.

Bowles is arguing for universal coverage to keep people out of the ERs.

Which side needs to budge?