and we could take some of the congestion out of there, and get true high-speed traffic in there, and we don t have to vest public money, and the private sector will do it, and virgin trail did it in england. let s talk about privatization for just a second. amtrak lost $227 million last year and needs $52 billion in infrastructure work and the technology that positive train control that would have presented the philadelphia derailment cost $52,000 per mile of track, and if you own a private rail company, if you are a private company, congressman micah, would you buy amtrak? you don t have to buy amtrak. the university of pennsylvania showed a route with parallel lines where you could put in high speed rail. the private sector will come in and invest and they have done it around the world and they will provide good and efficient service at a reasonable cost and provide competition, so we don t
the bait on some of the nonsense that gets spewed out around here. thanks. joining me now, congressman micah. thank you for joining us. important subject you are covering. is it really a stupid question when you, yourself called amtrak a third world rail operation? no question the united states has a third world rail system. it s a monopoly run in a soviet-style operation, amtrak. almost every country in the world is bringing in the private sector to invest to create high-speed rail. the obama administration took $10 billion, and put most of it into california where cows and vegetables are the only thing
economist jonathan gruber just ab guising to lawmakers and americans for the comments he made about the affordable care act. gruber was a key adviser in crafting the law s economic policy. he s been seen and heard on several videos now calling voters stupid. saying obamacare s lack of transparency is quote, a huge political advantage. the recent response to my comments and academic and other con fences exceeds both irrelevance and my role in health care reform. i behaved badly lyly lyly and i ll have to live with that. the aca s milestone accomplishment for our nation. i m joined by florida congressman john micah who was in the hearing room a few moments ago and heard the apology from jonathan gruber. does the apology satisfy you, congressman? not really.
up next. onthan gruber apologizing for the controversial comments of obamacare. is that going to be enough to clear his name? i ll ask republican congressman next. stephen colbert, president obama had a little fun tackling the issue of obamacare last night. even if republicans somehow did repeal it they would have to replace with their own health care plan. once they touch it [ laughter ] once they touch it they own it. if anything goes wrong, suddenly everybody will be complaining about mitch mcconnellcare.
the cost that people profiting like dr. gruber. you start out with 44 million uninsured. she came in and said they had 7.3 signed up. they actually had about 6.9, about 4 to 5 million people had insurance like me. i m on obamacare. i had insurance. we were forced off it. so we re talking about 3 to 4 million people maybe that actually got insured. then we have 41 million people without insurance in this country. we spent billions of dollars on this mess that has been created. what is the goal today, congressman micah? in addition to some of the things that you just mentioned and i m sure we ll get lots of sound bytes from lawmakers. what is the goal? what do we hope to accomplish by the end of the year? you want to find out where any of this has been successful. who they signed up. the other problem we ve got is