the doctors paid a salary don t increase the number of tests, don t increase the days in the hospital. it s defense, if it s a cost plus system through the roof. you can t have a cost plus system. and democrats would go for that. in fact, some of our you have democrats like sheldon whitehouse who have led the charge on it. well, i think that s good. one thing to make sure we do touch on before we close, we are talking about the economy and things to make a big difference. some bad news this week. fannie and freddie wants to reduce the principal for underwater homeowners. ed demarco said, no way. if homeowners pay what their houses are worth, they d spend more money and get the local economies going again. that was a big blow. not just the republicans. democrats are making bad mistakes. republican appointee and works for obama. obama should get rid of him and put someone there to let americans pay fairly for the houses.
much lower. republicans said no, pay the medicare costs, another $100 billion. but here s the root of the problem. the root of the problem is it is a cost-plus system. when you re sick, a doctor gets paid for each service, each prescription, each pill, each test. if you were to tell doctors you get a certain amount of money to treat jim smith, who has a certain form of diabetes, say $10,000, every study shows that you d save hundreds of billions of dollars without cutting the benefits to people. that s what democrats stand for. and the reason our republicans colleagues resist is they don t want the present medicare system to be preserved. but here, senator that is what their the political temptation here is for democrats to simply use this as a tactic to do what they did in new york, in the upstate race, and to prevail by saying, essentially, republicans want to take away health care.
he s doing, which ends medicare as we know it, but to take it off the table. now, what do we propose? we have been proposing changes in medicare for a while, but we believe in preserving the current system. medicare delivers a very good product. most people are very happy with the health care they get. it s just an inefficient system, and there are ways that you can change the way medicare delivers things without cutting the benefits to individuals and still save hundreds of billions of dollars. anyone who has gone through the medicare system knows the inefficiencies and duplications in that system because it s a cost-plus system. we began this a year ago, and the republicans attacked us for it. they attacked us because they wanted a radical now we know why they wanted to radically change things. but let me tell you a few things we re proposing. before you do that, waste, fraud and abuse is the typical handle of any politician talking about how to bring prices down. take one exam