Debate #3 Questions 2, 8 & 9 - Health Issues

Question #8

Question 8: Who is responsible for rising health care costs?

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, let's have a new question. It goes to you. And let's get back to economic issues.

Health insurance costs have risen over 36 percent over the last four years according to The Washington Post. We're paying more. We're getting less.

I would like to ask you: Who bears responsibility for this? Is it the government? Is it the insurance companies? Is it the lawyers? Is it the doctors? Is it the administration?

BUSH: Gosh, I sure hope it's not the administration.

There's a -- no, look, there's a systemic problem. Health care costs are on the rise because the consumers are not involved in the decision-making process.

Most health care costs are covered by third parties. And therefore, the actual user of health care is not the purchaser of health care.

And there's no market forces involved with health care.

It's one of the reasons I'm a strong believer in what they call health savings accounts.

These are accounts that allow somebody to buy a low-premium, high-deductible catastrophic plan and couple it with tax-free savings.

Businesses can contribute, employees can contribute on a contractual basis. But this is a way to make sure people are actually involved with the decision-making process on health care.

Secondly, I do believe the lawsuits -- I don't believe, I know -- that the lawsuits are causing health care costs to rise in America. That's why I'm such a strong believer in medical liability reform.

In the last debate, my opponent said those lawsuits only caused the cost to go up by 1 percent. Well, he didn't include the defensive practice of medicine that costs the federal government some $28 billion a year and costs our society between $60 billion and $100 billion a year.

Thirdly, one of the reasons why there's still high cost in medicine is because this is -- they don't use any information technology. It's like if you looked at the -- it's the equivalent of the buggy and horse days, compared to other industries here in America.

And so, we've got to introduce high technology into health care. We're beginning to do it. We're changing the language. We want there to be electronic medical records to cut down on error, as well as reduce cost.

People tell me that when the health care field is fully integrated with information technology, it'll wring some 20 percent of the cost out of the system.

And finally, moving generic drugs to the market quicker.

And so, those are four ways to help control the costs in health care.

SCHIEFFER: Sen. Kerry?

KERRY: The reason health care costs are getting higher, one of the principal reasons is that this administration has stood in the way of common-sense efforts that would have reduced the costs.

Let me give you a prime example.

In the Senate we passed the right of Americans to import drugs from Canada. But the president and his friends took it out in the House, and now you don't have that right.

The president blocked you from the right to have less expensive drugs from Canada.

We also wanted Medicare to be able to negotiate bulk purchasing. The VA does that. The VA provides lower-cost drugs to our veterans. We could have done that in Medicare.

Medicare is paid for by the American taxpayer. Medicare belongs to you. Medicare is for seniors, who many of them are on fixed income, to lift them out of poverty.

But rather than help you, the taxpayer, have lower cost, rather than help seniors have less expensive drugs, the president made it illegal -- illegal -- for Medicare to actually go out and bargain for lower prices.

Result: $139 billion windfall profit to the drug companies coming out of your pockets. That's a large part of your 17 percent increase in Medicare premiums.

When I'm president, I'm sending that back to Congress and we're going to get a real prescription drug benefit.

Now, we also have people sicker because they don't have health insurance. So whether it's diabetes or cancer, they come to hospitals later and it costs America more.

We got to have health care for all Americans.

SCHIEFFER: Go ahead, Mr. President.

BUSH: I think it's important, since he talked about the Medicare plan, has he been in the United States Senate for 20 years? He has no record on reforming of health care. No record at all.

He introduced some 300 bills and he's passed five.

No record of leadership.

I came to Washington to solve problems.

I was deeply concerned about seniors having to choose between prescription drugs and food. And so I led.

And in 2006, our seniors will get a prescription drug coverage in Medicare.

SCHIEFFER: Sen. Kerry? Thirty seconds.

KERRY: Once again, the president is misleading America.

I've actually passed 56 individual bills that I've personally written and, in addition to that, and not always under my name, there is amendments on certain bills.

But more importantly, with respect to the question of no record, I helped write -- I did write, I was one of the original authors of the early childhood health care and the expansion of health care that we did in the middle of the 1990s. And I'm very proud of that.

So the president's wrong.

Question #9

SCHIEFFER: Let me direct the next question to you, Sen. Kerry, and again, let's stay on health care. You have, as you have proposed and as the president has commented on tonight, proposed a massive plan to extend health-care coverage. You're also talking about the government picking up a big part of the catastrophic bills that people get at the hospital.

And you have said that you can pay for this by rolling back the president's tax cut on the upper 2 percent. You heard the president say earlier tonight that it's going to cost a whole lot more money than that. I'd just ask you, where are you going to get the money?

KERRY: Well, two leading national news networks have both said the president's characterization of my health-care plan is incorrect. One called it fiction. The other called it untrue.

The fact is that my health-care plan, America, is very simple. It gives you the choice. I don't force you to do anything. It's not a government plan. The government doesn't require you to do anything. You choose your doctor. You choose your plan.

If you don't want to take the offer of the plan that I want to put forward, you don't have [to]. You can keep what you have today, keep a high deductible, keep high premiums, keep a high co-pay, keep low benefits. But I got a better plan. And I don't think a lot of people are going to want to keep what they have today.

Here's what I do: We take over Medicaid children from the states so that every child in America is covered. And in exchange, if the states want to -- they're not forced to, they can choose to -- they cover individuals up to 300 percent of poverty. It's their choice.

I think they'll choose it, because it's a net plus of $5 billion to them. We allow you -- if you choose to, you don't have to -- but we give you broader competition to allow you to buy into the same health care plan that senators and congressmen give themselves. If it's good enough for us, it's good enough for every American. I believe that your health care is just as important as any politician in Washington, D.C. You want to buy into it, you can. We give you broader competition. That helps lower prices.

In addition to that, we're going to allow people 55 to 64 to buy into Medicare early. And most importantly, we give small business a 50 percent tax credit so that after we lower the costs of health care, they also get, whether they're self-employed or a small business, a lower cost to be able to cover their employees.

Now, what happens is when you begin to get people covered like that -- for instance in diabetes, if you diagnose diabetes early, you could save $50 billion in the health care system of America by avoiding surgery and dialysis.

It works. And I'm going to offer it to America.

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?

BUSH: In all due respect, I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations about -- oh, nevermind.

Anyway, let me quote the Lewin report. The Lewin report is a group of folks who are not politically affiliated. They analyzed the senator's plan. It cost $1.2 trillion. The Lewin report accurately noted that there are going to be 20 million people, over 20 million people added to government-controlled health care. It would be the largest increase in government health care ever. If you raise the Medicaid to 300 percent, it provides an incentive for small businesses not to provide private insurance to their employees.

Why should they insure somebody when the government's going to insure it for them? It's estimated that 8 million people will go from private insurance to government insurance. We have a fundamental difference of opinion. I think government-run health will lead to poor-quality health, will lead to rationing, will lead to less choice.

Once a health-care program ends up in a line item in the federal government budget, it leads to more controls. And just look at other countries that have tried to have federally controlled health care. They have poor-quality health care. Our health-care system is the envy of the world because we believe in making sure that the decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by officials in the nation's capital.

SCHIEFFER: Senator?

KERRY: The president just said that government-run health care results in poor quality. Now, maybe that explains why he hasn't fully funded the VA, and the VA hospital is having trouble, and veterans are complaining.

Maybe that explains why Medicare patients are complaining about being pushed off of Medicare. He doesn't adequately fund it.

But let me just say to America: I am not proposing a government-run program. That's not what I have. I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Senators and congressmen have a wide choice. Americans ought to have it, too.

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?

BUSH: Talk about the VA: We've increased VA funding by $22 billion in the four years since I've been president. That's twice the amount that my predecessor increased VA funding.

Of course we're meeting our obligation to our veterans, and the veterans know that. We're expanding veterans' health care throughout the country. We're aligning facilities where the veterans live now. Veterans are getting very good health care under my administration, and they will continue to do so during the next four years.

Re: Debate #3 Questions 2, 8 & 9 - Health Issues


We can get flu shots from Canada, but can't reimport the drugs Amercian drug companies made and then sold to Canada. That makes absolutely no sense at all!!!!!!!