concerted effort to continue the effort for health care insurance reform on behalf of republicans, if they want to maintain any good will. that s a big if. boehner s smart. i m not advising john boehner under any circumstances but if they were smart speaking simultaneously ]. i likoe john boehner. when they get back from recess, i would write a bill. it would do a whole slew of things that get thrown out or don t, it would have tort reform, health care savings accounts, a patient s bill of rights, et cetera. pass it through the house and dare harry reid not to pass it. that s pre-health care ruling by the supreme court. if the court strikes it down, the republicans have to be for something because barack obama s going to be on the campaign trail using it, so pass a bill, then dare the senate democrats to do something with it or not. we have to wrap it there. ezra, there s also the question of what the health insurance
and in psycho talk tonight, watch out, nevada. the front-runner for the republican nomination for senate is sue lowden and she has nutty or goofy ideas for health care reform. at a candidate s forum last week she was asked what she would have suggested instead of the democratic health care bill. she started out rambling about health care savings accounts. that s old news. then she threw out this dandy. i would have suggested, and i think that bartering is really good. those doctors who you pay cash, you can barter. and that would get price down in a hurry. i would say go ahead out and pay cash for whatever your medical needs are. and go ahead and barter with your doctor. barter. the radio business that would be, like, a tradeout.
though the president says that, that s not what his plans does. and you can define it going you defined it pretty well on the intro to this segment. you talked about the increase in taxes, about the increase in intrusion of the federal government, you talked about the mandates, the individual mandates. in order to do those things, you ve got to have the government telling people what to do. what that means is you and i and every single american will not have the kind of health coverage we want. we ll have the kind of health coverage that the government dictates to us. ive think that strikes a chord all across this land. the president did speak of, you know, had the big meeting up there, that was on national television, it was live, the president bringing in a lot of republicans, both sides. he did say there were republican ideas that he liked, including some proposals to combat fraud. with the undercover investigations, increased medicaid payments to doctors. the malpractice lawsui
welcome back to hardball. in a letter today to congress al leaders, president obama outlined four republican ideas for thursday s summit, or from last thursday s summit that he said he s exploring right now. they are senator coburn suggesting to curb medicare fraud by having undercover investigators disguised as patients. and republicans to expand medical malpractice reform pilot programs. senator grassley suggested to increase payment to doctors who treat medicaid patients. and senator grasso s suggestion to access to health care savings accounts. president obama noted his proposal does not include extra medicare benefits for certain states like florida. that s something senator john mccain had criticized at last night s summit last week s summit. let me go right now to senator
universal health care there has brought both expanded care and reduced cost to the system. the private sector provides the majority of the care, but the government insures low cost through mandatory forced savings, like health care savings accounts, and price controls. health care spending accounts for less than 4% of the gdp in that country. meanwhile, here in the united states, it is quadruple that number. the world health organization ranked singapore s system as the sixth best in the world. at one-quarter the cost. the u.s., which spends more than any nation in the world per person, number one, comes in at 37th. here s my bottom line. there are clearly better systems and better plans out there than anything the american people have been presented with up to this point. and bipartisanship can be accomplished with the right people on the case. we have seen it happen before.