Transcripts For FBC Stossel 20131104

And now john stossel. John happy halloween. What scares you . That thing scares me as much as Big Government and Central Planning. This is obamacare. This kind of micromanagement takes our money and limits our freedom. Government cannot even count votes accurately. Now theyre going to manage our health care . Of few weeks ago the president address the failure of this website and made one point that is absolutely true. The Affordable Care act is not just a website. It is much more. John right. This is so much more. The failure of the online exchanges, just a symptom of this disease. Government micromanagement. They cannot make a website work, and yet for years the private Company Offer something called ehealth. Millions of people go there and comparison shop. Many buy insurance. The website lists different companies, prices, deductibles, have enrolled more than 2 million people. Policy analyst john goodman points out that they will enroll the entire country is given the freedom to do so. But government says no. Ehealth is private. Not a Single Exchange has contacted the government does not that. Skeptical of that, a doctor, obstetrician and taxes, stopped practicing a job. Now a congressman. Doctor, you wrote an oped were you said america was supposed to be different from europe. What is your point . Honestly, the whole premise of the founding of our society was that it was a free society based upon limited government with government with the consent of the government. We broke away from a country where the divine right of kings was the popular philosophy. You owed to the king the tide and tax because after all, he was anointed by god. John a majority at the time voted for it. It passed and as the president is apt to tell you very quickly, it passed through the Supreme Court with some changes. You know, is still be, a part of the United States congress to change something that is bad. Chase something that people dont want. And really, the next up in this trauma, if you will, is up to the American People. I have done what i cant the last three years to either try to deflect or improve are not damaged people so badly with this thing. Honestly, do you remember back in 1988 when the Catastrophic Health care plan was revealed after the people rose up and said, you have got to get rid of this . That is the type of citizen involvement that is going to be required to reverse course on what you correctly point out is a massive government overreach. John lets move on from the legislation itself and just the idea. The european idea is that health care is a right. What do you say to these american politicians making the same point . Yes, right on not a privilege are right, not a privilege. Not a privilege for a fortunate few, but a right for everyone of us to enjoy. John a right, government should give it to people. I would prefer to look at it more as a responsibility. I recognize it was my responsibility to provide food, housing, and health care for my family. John what about poor and helpless people . Well, there are Safety Net Programs, and no one is suggesting that those be done away with. But why in the world would you expand what started out to be a Safety Net Program to almost half the country which is what the Medicaid Expansion and the Affordable Care act does. If we were doing such a great job then people would have embraced it. In fact, they have not because those Safety Net Programs a been part of the problems that have driven up costs and delivering health care in the ad states. There were ways to reform those programs and not make them so deleterious, but for whatever reason we chose not to do that. John and when they say are right, i would point out that freespeech is a right, but that is about being left alone. If health care is a right, that means they have a right to forcibly force you to treat someone of forcibly take your money to treat someone. What is your answer to your colleague, congressman alan grayson who on the floor of Congress Said this . The republicans welfare plan for america, dont get sick. Thats right. If you get sick, america, the republican Health Care Plan is this, die quickly. John you work with these gentlemen, you want people to die quickly . I have never spoken to and about that speech. I would wonder if today he regrets making it, but here is the thing. He you have the ability in this country perhaps more so than any other country in the world to access what is a very for gleaning health care system. I practiced in it for years. I know that. I know everyone did not have insurance and certainly did not expect compensation from everyone that i saw. There were ways to deal with the problems at hand. And fortunately what the president , with the congress did three and a half years ago was successfully through people off the scent of how to fix things. The result is what we have now. That is why you have people so upset. The president knew in the federal im sorry, the federal register back in june of 2010 that the millions of people that were now hearing about losing Health Insurance, they knew that over three years ago. Yet they chose to do nothing about it. John thank you, congressman burgess. Most of the discussion over obamacare starts at the assumption that government, someone else, maybe some Insurance Companies should pay for our health care. Is a right. Think about how this perverse incentive. What if we bought food the way we pay for health care. What would that be like . I would buy state after state. Why not. My Insurance Company is paying for most of it. Why should i get a hamburger . I will get the finest gets a stake. Lots of it. This seems crazy. Yet that is how we buy our health care. Former Lieutenant Governor of new york actually read through all of this. This requires that basically everybody datebook everything. Everything, not stake, not that quality, but the law requires that everyone have a onesizefitsall government designed benefit package. All ten categories in it. So the 50yearold couple has to pay for maternity care. The straight arrow, he has to pay for inpatient sensitive treatment. John he wants everyone to be protected. The assumption is that we are too stupid to choose our own Health Insurance. That is why right now millions of people who are promised they cod keep their health plan up are being herded out of the plans. You can almost hear the whip cracking. John it includes all this stuff oh, yes. Suddenly the washington bureaucrats have changed the promise. It is not you can keep your plan if you like it. It is, you had a plan that was a scam. You were too stupid to know it. Now we are giving you the package that we know is right. John which costs a lot more. Of course it does. It includes all of these things you dont need, but they want you to have it, not because you will use the services, because youre going to put your money in there so that they can spend your money taking care of somebody else. And, for example, colonoscopy is to buy a 30yearold man does not need that kind of free preventive care. And being forced to pay for colonoscopy is filled almost as bad as having to get one. John but we have to cover the people who needed. Get the healthy to pay for the sake. It sounds kind. John that is not how this law was sold. John troop. The president knew that to sell this lawyer had to say, you can keep but you have if you like it will be less take care of the uninsured. It was a scam from the beginning john as the at the reality of Central Planning is now being revealed, the left continues to run celebrations of how great obamacare is, especially for you women. John when you play it pay nothing for something you overuses. Where is the tooth fairy . They are suggesting that there is one. None of that is free. It is included up front in your premium. The reason mens premiums are doubling is that they are paying for it even though they dont use it. John lets go to the president s promise about the cost. He repeatedly said, your insurance premiums will go down. Were going to lower your premiums by 20,500 per family per year. He could sell used cars. That must be what he did before. He sounds like a demagogue. John central planners really thought somehow by extruding young people. There is a reason. These premiums include 100 billion in new taxes because Insurance Companies are passing out. When you read your premium check it includes a big chunk of uncle sam. Of course it includes paying for the big benefit package, only a little bit of which may be relevant to your life. John display and other commercial from the incredible thanks, obamacare website. Hearts beating. And it does to history. We are rising sharply. John then in 2009 Something Wonderful happened. The bad people. Angry. Misinformation rationing. But health care one out. You forgot the end of the story. Over half of this law is paid for by cuts to medicare. Hospitals are already laying off nurses. The care is being spread thinner. This plan, unfortunately, lowers the standard of care. That is why it is not what is going in your shopping cart. It puts government in charge of your care. It takes away something as precious as life itself, your liberty. John what we libertarians want is more individual decisions. That means people pay for more of their health care of themselves. People dont want to do that. By the way, people will be paying for a lot of their health care themselves. Take a look at the deductibles. 5,000 deductible and a bronze plan, and a 3,000 deductible in this over plan, for an individual. As deductibles are so high that young people are never going to get in a callback. John zero copay, free birth control. Check the details. It is not a good deal. John thank you, betsy mccoy. If you would like to keep this conversation going, you can use that has stag to let people know what you think. Coming up, something i like has happened because of this law. It is not the celebrity pitches for obamacare like this one. But i was surprised that obamacare may have accomplished something good. John jim my customers can shop around. But it doesnt usually work that way with health care. With unitedhealthcare, i get information on quality rated doctors, Treatment Options and cost estimates, so we can ke Better Health decisions. Thats health in numbers. Unitedhealthcare. You are gonna need a wingman. And my cash back keeps the party going. But my Airline Miles take it worldwide. [ male announcer ] it shouldnt be this hard. With creditcards. Com, its easy to search hundreds of cards and apply online. Creditcards. Com. Nothing, thats what . Thats why i take prilosec otc each morning for my frequent heartburn. cause it gives me a big fat zero heartburn. Woo hoo [ male announcer ] prilosec otc. The number one doctor recommended frequent heartburn medicine for 8 straight years. [ larry ] you cant beat zero heartburn. And best of all, it means i can enjoy all the foods i love. Oh, zero heartburn is awesome. Just like zero clery. [ male announcer ] prilosec otc. One pill each morning. 24 hours. Zero heartburn. A lot of folks have been talking about our new Health Care Enrollment website, allen has been crashing and freezing and shutting down and stalling and not working and breaking and sucking. [laughter] john of liberal media criticizing their favorite administration, pretty bad. But this news was so boring, even they could not ignore it. This week was trying to think, who might have real insight into the website is corrupt . One of those annoying alerts pop up on my computer screen morning , virus detected, your computer is at risk. This is not a scam. The worlds biggest Security Technology company. The engineer who founded it joins us now. You were asked to help fix the obamacare site. The reason was what you just mentioned. I found the Worlds Largest Computer Security company. In the industry i am known as a reasonably confident engineer. On the negative side, my past history and life style would not make the best Public Relations image. In many cases to my chest to turn them down because i did not think there were serious about implementing what had to be done which is throwing out and starting over. John its also part of your belief that the way Government Works is just not conducive to producing a competent website. Actually, a whole bunch of reasons for that. There is a federal acquisition requires manual which is 2,000 pages long. John i happen to have that here. 2,000 pages, yes. Anyone who works with the fed, they have to obey this. In if youre going to do a website for obamacare you also have to understand and obey 6,000 more pages. That is correct. So the total of 8,000 pages. You have to be a government expert, not a Technology Expert to just meet the requirements. The proposals are as large as the requirements. Sometimes thousands of pages long. That is not conducive. The company menu of project you go into a room with a blank sheet of paper. Make it work. And then you get to choose exactly what needs to be done given the technology at that moment. Things in it. They have their uses vhs recorders. At year to standards that no longer exist. It is bizarre. John but that is government. Not only this not work, but he discovered there are security holes. I alerted the press to that very early on. Not least of which is that they did not bother and it is not just interplanting. It is Central Management that makes things work. You can plan all you want, but theres no one managing and coordinating it wont work. John why is this a hackers would dream . What is it but the person in danger . No matter spinning at a couple hundred million for the software. Every conceivable name that people might tiepin. It since camera was your credit card information. Your bank account is likely to be emptied. This is a identity theft. John 8 million users in a week. 8 million users in a week, but they only had less than has singledigit number of people who successfully signed up. I know that every system has glitches. The iphone fourth is still works. But this is a credit catastrophic failure. It is not the glitch. It was at testing, Quality Assurance of system integration. John government will run all of our health care. That is just a scary thought. Cdi. Thank you for joining us with your expertise. You are welcome, sir. John Rewarding Companies because they can wade through all of this regulation rather than hiring specialists to really know Software Wont Work for long in the private sector because private companies with their own money on the line have quickly learned to figure out who does not deliver. Canadian journalist says he was the surprise when he learned cdi to make canadian based company, was behind the obamacare website. Why . This is a company that has figured out how to work with government regulations. They have figured out how to wait through the 6,000 regulations that are governing the building of the obamacare website. They know how to do that. They have been doing it. There were established in the 1970s. John a history of failure. They would point to some 665 successes. Let me give you a few. 46 million was spent just have them go away to build the diabetes registry in ontario. The goal was to create an electronic of record for every citizen in the countrys most populous province. They are small part of that billion dollar project which did not deliver anything was a diabetes registry. They could not believe it delivered. A small province. Tiny. They could not deliver on that. It went from four and a half million to 35 million. The bill the federal gun registry to track every rifle and hunting, shotgun in the country. They were eventually fired after about 90 million. The project john i am getting the drift. You also say that maybe they get the job because they have chronic connections with the administration. We will get to the Michele Obama one in a moment, but the carney connection should have felt the administration no that they should not have fired these guys. I will give you a couple of examples. If they call that the most recent government of contract, the problems of ontario, they could have had David Axelrod of the premier of ontario. The same political adviser. Valerie jerry, her daughter married the son of a cabinet minister. John we have a picture o her. A party together. So you have these back from connections. They could have called and said, these guys any good. No . We are firing them . Okay. Were done. Maybe it was tiny towns with me, Michele Obamas classmate who would have been the chump card. Senior vice president. This is part of the way from my perspective house seat gi operates in terms of having connections. When they get in they dont just build and leave the way john mcafee would. The bill then stay and a part of the system which brings them more money. John all very friendly. Recall that crony capitalism. Thank you. The web sites are a flop. Costs are up. You may have lost insurance you like, but i was surprised because of obamacare something good has happened. I will tell you what that is next. So i can reach ally bank 24 7, but there are no branches . 24 7. Im sorry, im just really reluctant to try new things. Really . Whats wrong with trying new things . Look mommys new vacuum cat screech you feel that in your muscles . I do. Drink water. Its a long story. Well, not having branches lets us give you great rates and service. Id like that. A new way to bank. A better way to save. Ally bank. Your money needs an ally. Help the gulf when we made recover and learn the gulf, bp from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. I can tell you safety is at the heart of everything we do. Weve added cuttingedge technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a stateoftheart monitoring center, whe experts watch over all drilling activity twentyfourseven. And were sharing what weve learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. Our commitment has never been stronger. Hmm. Mmhmm. [ engine revs ] [ male announcer ] oh what fun it is to ride. Get the mercedesbenz on your wish list at the winter event going on now but hurry, the offer ends soon. [ santa ] ho, ho, ho [ male announcer ] lease the 2014 glk350 for 419 a month at your local mercedesbenz dealer. John here it is. Obamacare. 2,000 pages. This is what scares me. The idea that the American People vote for politicians to think it is good to micromanage life with stuff like this. This is awful. This kind of Central Planning reduces tauruses and complicates life. But theyre is a silver lining, something i had not expected. Specializing in health care. He noticed that parts of obamacare by accident have done something good. Possibly. John which is . One of the things is obamacare attempt to set up these insurance exchanges where people can shop for coverage. Plus, of course, it does not touch that much. It modestly increases this set of regulations in the employer based market. Some total of these effects is possibly to increase the number of people who shop for coverage on a round and have held savings accounts and catastrophic coverage which is exactly the kind of insurance that freemarket and people said we have always wanted to have. John that makes sense. The old system was no freemarket paradise. Spent by the government before obamacare. Such an important point is so Many Americans have the impression. And we had a freemarket system in america before obamacare and all those European Countries were social welfare states. That is done exactly right. America has a single payer system for the elderly, medicare, medicaid, and the employer sponsored system is not a true freemarket system either. John we get insurance from our employers, which is stupid. Another form of dependence. Dependent upon your employer for coverage. John so this bill gives people higher cost and more people are waking up and paying attention to what Health Care Costs for the first time. People thought everything should be free. Many are buying Health Savings accounts. Absolutely. In 2003 as a law passed during the bush years legalized effectively the use of Health Savings accounts to save for your own health. John it should never have been illegal. Now that you can say for your own health care, kind of like a 4o1 ks for your health care. You can take that money and invested. Instead of having a comprehensive Health Care Plan you have a smaller premium if you get hit by a bus, have a heart attack, covered for this catastrophic conditions. The rest of the time youre saving, and then rolls up and accumulates. John that is because it is your money and he stuck to ask the doctor, does it have to cost that much . You can shop based on price, value, quality. All of a sudden doctors cater to you, hospitals cater to you. John a new example of that from oklahoma with a Medical Center at the university of oklahoma posts prices. And theyre doing a huge business because there is enormous demand from neighboring states to neighboring countries where people say, you know what, in dallas i am being charged 20,000 for a Knee Replacement. I can send this back to oklahoma and say its 15,000. John this kind of competition is not just what brings lower prices but also can lead to innovation. I noticed the detroit Medical Center bragged that we would be the first michigan hospital to use barcos for medications cant. That is probably a good thing, but supermarkets with candy and coke 35 years ago. And why . Because consumers are not in charge of their own health dollars. Lacy, cosmetic surgery. You know these examples. The Technology Keeps Getting Better and the prices keep going down. Insurance does not cover the surgery. John my doctor will not do that. Thank you very much. Fighting the fight. Coming up, president obama got celebrities to tell people go and sign up for coverage. Celebrities were eager to help. This is the quicksilver cash back card from capil one. Its not the limit the cash i earnvery month card. Its not the i only earn decent rewards at the gas station card. Its the nogames, nosigning up, everydayrewarding, kungfufighting, silverlightninginabottle, bringinghomethebacon cash back card. This is the quicksilver card from capital one. Unlimited 1. 5 cash back on eve purchase, everywhere, every single day. So ask yourself, whats in your wallet . John samantha much skeptical of government managed Health Insurance but there is one group of people who tend to be gungho for anything obama and that is celebrities. If you need help in chance you can find affordable coverage of the new healthinsurance marketplace heathcare. Gov. John she recorded that along with a bunch of other celebrities. Whether she regrets and not, the point is that this a ministration has been very successful at getting celebrities to endorse his policy. The reason they step do this kind of stuff, salaries are especially useful because obamacare really needs jen people to sign up for it to work. Turning out young people is crucial to make this law work. That is with the Obama Administration says. There numbers shows in order for this lot to really work and be sustainable in need about two halfmillion young and relatively Healthy People to sign up for exchanges in thee3 first year. The reason they need that is because these same people, by paying more and by not using very much of care will balance out the premiums and create a broader risk pool that will john cover the people like me who are much more likely to get sick and whose costs would be much higher. I get a break. And the and people pay more. And is his Campaign Style marketing. In fact met the Obama Administration has thought about this in the exact same way that they thought about the president ial political campaigns in which obama was actually quite successful in turning out young people to vote. This time john well you are on that, lets point out that he hired these private consultants brilliant that use the internet, but when it came to a sitting at the obamacare website he used government contractors. A lot more experienced during the marketing side. That is really forcing them here. You know, like i said, the issue for the campaign here is that in the past they have tried to get people to vote. Now theyre trying to get them to sign up for coverage. It is a big difference that is important because going to vote does not cost you anything except wherever time it takes to get there. These insurance policies will be fairly expensive. We have seen reports that say that in all 50 states policies for young people are going to be more expensive on average, about 260 percent more expensive. The prices we are seeing in many cases are going to be the same price as a Monthly Payment on a car. John a brand new Toyota Corolla thats right. John so they want to brainwash them, and celebrities are helping. We have the vampire diaries actress. On answer gramm. We have health care for all. Gillen get coverage. Without it, you are naked. Quickly, other celebrities, following, tweeting to get coverage, in the boiler, adam scott, emily van kamp. I do not know who these people are. Some of them went to the white house and met with the president about this. They are in the tank, and they are in love. This is the marketing, the average said they are choosing to do. The question is, is a celebrity focused campaign and have to get your people to spend 200, two under and 75 a month on Health Insurance when the alternative is to simply pay a penalty of about 95 next year . That is the question. This is the administrations question. Can we make this work . They ran a focus group. They were unable to find that a majority of young people would sign up at the 200 price point which is what they were asking people about. John the Baltimore Ravens have 130,000 to help promote the maryland state exchange. Is shows you the kind of budget. That is nothing. California has an 80 million Marketing Budget just for marketing obamacare. John thank you. The coming up, i am critical of obamacare, the governmentdominated system that preceded it. Does any country have a better system . Yes, says my next guest. There is one. That is next. My customers can shop around. But it doesnt usually work that way with health care. With unitedhealthcare, i get information on quality rated doctors, Treatment Options and cost estimates, so we can ke Better Health decisions. Thats health in numbers. Unitedhealthcare. Our time is short this is our fate im yours its not for colds, its not for pain, its just for sleep. Because sleep is a beautiful thing™. Zzzquil. The nonhabit forming sleepaid from the makers of nyquil®. John after looking at obamacare and the governmentdominated system that preceded obamacare, we search the were looking for a place for the free market to be allowed to work, but there is not in need. Every industrialized country copied a governmentheavy model and some form. There is one place where consumers are given a little more choice. There is more market competition. And short enough, and that place people spend less on health care. They spend live longer. Where is that . Just flew in from there. John we just took the overnight flight. Looking pretty fresh you been studying singapore. They must contribute. It is germany. It is a housing savings account in their retirement accounts. You use that money, and it is threequarters of the health care expenses. When it is your money, you are more careful. John unlike in america where we pay for 10 percent of the stuff directly, threefourths of it, the consumer spends. They shop around. And they also have a Catastrophic Health Insurance Plan which on average cost to percent of the u. S. Health insurance bill, 2 because it is just for the catastrophe. I like our plans which are just covering everything. The second principle is transparency. And that is critical. Transparency in price, transparency in have come. If youre going to shock you better kw what youre buying. There autonomously run unit. Cost and quality and it gives the consumer choice. John if they make extra profit they can reinvest it. Thats right. John Life Expectancy is longer than the United States. Not much longer. But in addition to that it is every other. If you like it the child mortality, that under the age of five, death and it. The incidence of diabetes, they do much better than we do. The United States is just slightly above the dominican republic. John the quality of care. Life span. Part of it is because week should he self more often. I am not sure about that. We drive cars and kill ourselves on the highway more often. It is not the best. It is a pretty good measure. Char the mortality is a very good measure. Theyre not driving cars are shooting each other or smoking. John you have written a book about this. Affordable excellence. The Singapore Health care story. Coming up, my take on obamacare. announcer at scottrade, our clients trade and invest exactly how they want. With scottrades online banking, i get one view of my bank and brokerage accounts with one login. To easily move my money when i need to. Plus, when i call my local scottrade office, i can talk to someone who knows how i trade. Because i dont trade like everybody. I trade like me. Im with scottrade. announcer scottradeproud to be ranked best overall client experience. John all this talk about the obamacare website. This is the bigger problem. Central planning which is what this is the rarely works well. The last thing you want to stress Central Planning what is our health care. Central planning can work up a few throw enough money at it. Most americans like the public schools. People like european trains, some like air france, as canadians like there single payer system. But over time Central Planning tends to break down. It took the soviet union 70 years to fail. Socialism eventually failed. Capitalism won the cold war, and now we are adopting the economic system. This is nuts. Central planning appeals. To lower your premiums 2,500 per family per year. John people want to believe that. We dont have time to read all of the details, but the president went to harvard. He and his experts must know how to manage Health Care Better than the confusing competition we have now. We chose the planners. But windy that competition because without it you get products like the centrally planned car. A car made by east germans made of plastic. Government experts created it, just as our experts created obamacare. If you want the absolutely best car you get that smart is people together in a room and tell them to design it. But this is what you get. When the berlin wall fell a disappeared. It could not compete with even our mediocre cars competing in our free market. Here is another example. What if your computer was created by central planners . France tried that 30 years ago french politicians created the minitel Computer Network giving everyone in government a free computer. You think that would have given them a huge lead in the computer age, but that is now what happened. Forprofit competitors left france in the dust. Government experts could not keep up with the spontaneous experiments. But economists put it, order generated without design can far outstrip plans may unconsciously contrived. The french government response was to offer metical and six colors. You might say they are isolated examples. I am cherry picking. Ai france is okay, and maybe it is. It is only because it has to compete with private airlines. Obamacare outlaws much of the private competition,. Private Companies Make lousy goods, because they have competition they often then go out of business. Governments never do. Still, the folks who like obamacare and Central Planning in general point to canada. Canadian health care is free. That just means paid for with your taxes which means less competition in almost no innovation. Governments really innovate. They keep doing what they did last year. We have to wait. A Knee Replacement are cataract surgery, you may wait years because that is the way the central planners will toss down. In some parts of canada they have a lottery to see who will get to see a doctor. Once a week the town clerk gets this box out of the closet. Inside of the names of everyone in town who wants a family doctor. She pulls out one slip and then calls the lucky winner. Your name has been drawn. You are quite welcome. John i should say, not all of Canadian Health care is long lines. Some places offer easy access to cutting edge technology. Ct scan, endoscopy, laparoscopy, arthroscopic procedure is to evaluate joins for cartilage abnormality. John available all the time. Twentyfour hours to miss seven days a week. If i see a patient that is trying has torn a cruciate ligament, we can generally have that patients scheduled within probably a week. John but you have to bark or me how to get this kind of treatment. One as a ct scan . That clinics said they could get a dog in the next day for people. The waiting list. Many plans will come here. As they are leaving, the next time i get sick or want to come here. I dont want to get there again hospitals. John the route to better and Cheaper Health Care is market competition, not this. Lets get rid of that. Thats our show. See you next week. Gerri hello, everybody. Im gerri willis. Tonight on the willis report damage control mode over obamacare as a new report shows six people signed up on day one. We do not have a reliable enrollment figure yet. Gerri also, the irs, what you need to know. And how do you do that . Where parents need to draw the line with sharon. We are watching out for you tonight on the willis report