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H.R. 82, an act to amend Title II of the Social Security Act to repeal the government pension offset and windfall elimination provisions.
Pursuant to Section 3Z of House Resolution 5, the House stands adjourned until noon on Friday, December 27th, 2024.
No votes today in the U.S. House, or, for that matter, the rest of the year.
Instead, the Chamber will be holding these brief sessions every few days until January 3rd, when the 118th Congress will gavel out for the last time and the new Congress will begin.
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Good morning, everyone.
On this December 24th, happy holidays to all of you.
We will kick off the Washington Journal this morning with your view on health care and whether or not you think it's a federal responsibility.
Republicans, dial in at 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
If you work in the healthcare industry, your line this morning is 202-748-8003.
All of you can text us at 202-748-8003.
Just include your first name, city, and state.
You can also post on facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ.
We'll begin with history this morning.
15 years ago today, this was a headline in the Washington Post.
Senate passes that so-called Obamacare bill on a 60 to 39 vote.
Let's go into the C-SPAN archives and show you then-President Obama talking about the vote.
In a historic vote that took place this morning, members of the Senate joined their colleagues in the House of Representatives to pass a landmark health insurance reform package.
Legislation that brings us toward the end of a nearly century-long struggle to reform America's health care system.
Ever since Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform in 1912, seven presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike, have taken up the cause of reform.
Time and time again, such efforts have been blocked by special interest lobbyists who've perpetuated a status quo that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people.
But with passage of reform bills in both the House and the Senate, we are now finally poised to deliver on the promise of real, meaningful health insurance reform that will bring additional security and stability to the American people.
15 years ago today, the Senate passed on Christmas Eve the their health care legislation that later became Obamacare.
This morning, is healthcare coverage a government responsibility?
That is our question for all of you this morning.
Take a look at a recent poll done by Gallup.
Federal government responsibility to ensure health care coverage, their question posed to those that they polled and 62% said yes.
36% said no.
Here's how it broke down by party.
90% said that it was a federal government responsibility.
90% of Democrats, 32% of Republicans, and 65% of Independents said it is a federal government responsibility.
We want to know from you this morning.
Do you agree or disagree?
And if so, tell us why.
And we have a fourth line this morning for those that work in the health care industry.
We want to hear from you.
So start dialing in on this Christmas Eve morning.
President-elect Donald Trump in a recent NBC interview was pressed on his plans for health care in the coming year in his new administration.
Here's what he had to say.
I've been talking to Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
They say it's no longer feasible to repeal and replace Obamacare because it's so entrenched in the system.
Do you see it that way?
Is that now off the table repealing and replacement?
When John McCain let us down by voting, and Murkowski and Collins and whoever it was that voted against, but they really let us down.
They did us a great disservice because we would have had great health.
Obamacare is lousy health care.
It's very expensive health care for the people.
It's also expensive for the country, but for the people.
It's lousy health care.
When John McCain gave his thumbs down after saying for 10 years that he wants to repeal and replace, okay?
And then he came out, he put his now famous thumbs down, and he became a hero to the left.
Just let me just tell you, if we find something better, I would love to do it.
But unless we find, but one thing I have to say, I inherited Obamacare or anything else you want to go.
This guy got 20 names, but I inherited it.
And I had a decision to make with health and human services.
I had a big decision to make.
Do I make it as good as we can make it or do I let it rot?
And a lot of political people said, let it rot and let it be a failure.
I said, that's not the right thing to do.
And I had very good people in the medical area that handled that.
And I said, what do you want to do?
He said, we really have an obligation to make it as good as we can.
And we did.
We made it as good as we can make it.
Instead of making it bad where everybody would be calling for its repeal, I made it so that it works.
Now, you did try to overturn it.
Well, it's lousy.
I did try to overturn it.
You did have your Justice Department try to direct the Supreme Court to do it.
No, we got a little bit of a surprising opinion, to be honest with you.
If it would have been overturned, we would have had much better health care right now.
But right now, we have something that I made the best of.
I could have made the worst of it, and it would have fallen by the wayside.
I did the right thing from a human standpoint.
But, you know, I'm sort of proud of my decision.
At the same time, sometimes I regret it.
I told the people, and I gave them the money to do it.
I said, fix it, make it work, because people would have suffered.
But it's too bad that they voted no.
I wish John McCain, I wish he fought for 10 years on repairing, replacing Obamacare, for 10 years, and then he voted against.
Nobody understands it.
Sir, you said during the campaign you had concepts of a plan.
Do you have an actual plan at this point for health care?
Yes, we have concepts of a plan that would be better.
Still just concepts?
Do you have a fully developed plan?
Let me explain.
We have the biggest health care companies looking at it.
We have doctors.
We're always looking because Obamacare stinks.
It's lousy.
There are better answers.
If we come up with a better answer, I would present that answer to Democrats and to everybody else, and I do something about it.
But until we have that, or until they can approve it, but we're not going to go through the big deal.
I am the one that saved Obamacare, I will say, and I did the right thing.
I could have done the more political thing and killed it.
And all I had to do is starve it to death.
You did try to have your Justice Department effectively kill it, doesn't it?
No, sir.
Kill it from a legal standpoint.
But from a physical standpoint, I made it work.
President-elect Donald Trump in a recent interview saying that Obamacare is lousy, Gallup did a poll on this question as well.
And this is what they found out.
54% approve of the Affordable Care Act.
38% disapprove.
When you break that down by party, 94% of Democrats say they approve.
19% of Republicans and 53% of Independents.
This morning on this Tuesday, December 24th, is healthcare coverage a government responsibility?
Chris in Auburn, Maine, Democratic Caller, welcome to the conversation this morning.
Go ahead.
Good morning, boy.
It's really hard listening to Donald Trump do his pretzel lying gig thing about how he saved it.
Oh, my head is exploding.
Unfortunately, the right wing just believe him.
So I just had this conversation with, and I don't know why most of my friends are far right-wing, but we were having this conversation about somebody which had said that healthcare is a human right.
And I really thought about that.
And I'm thinking, it's not a human right.
It's a social responsibility.
And so what I did was I equated it to a person walking on the side of the canal.
There's a guy in the middle of the river who's drowning, and there's a rope right there in front of you.
And you can throw the rope to the guy to save him.
Now, the guy that's drowning, does he have a human right?
Is it a human right that he has to be saved?
Or is it a social responsibility of the person walking on the side to throw the rope?
And I think of healthcare as the same thing.
I personally got a cancer diagnosis, and I recently had to have an MRI.
And when I came back to see my cancer doc, I asked him, the process took about an hour.
And I came, I said, Dean, did you know what this cost?
And he said, yeah, I think it was like $1,500.
He thought, you know, your portion's $500.
I said, no, it was over $6,000 and my portion was $5,000.
And when I posted this on Facebook, this is my first real experience with having to really get treatment.
A friend of mine from Ireland I went to school with an oncologist and he said, Chris, come on over here.
It's only $300.
So I'm literally going to pay less to fly to Ireland, have another MRI done, and have a nice little vacation than it costs here in the U.S.
And why is that?
Because we have a CEO who made $50 million a year, quote unquote, running the health system in America.
We've decided in America that healthcare is a profit center, not a social responsibility.
So my answer is it's a social responsibility.
And we are insane in this country for not recognizing that we are different from every other country on the planet in that regard.
So Chris, when you say it's a social responsibility, is it the federal government who holds that responsibility?
There's nobody else that can do it.
Sorry, Sam.
You can't just leave it to a bunch of, you can't leave it to a bunch of charities to try to do it and hope for the best.
You've seen some of these Christian funding networks where they sort of try to pool money and they found that because the cost of giving birth is too high, they're just running out of money.
Yeah, the federal government is the only thing that can effectively pull in all the funds necessary to do it.
All right.
Chris there.
His thoughts.
Democratic caller in Maine and best of luck to you.
Delia in Miami, Republican.
Yes, I have experienced socialized medicine because my husband's family lived in Spain.
If people are prepared to wait for a surgery and wait for a whole year to get it, oh yes, that's fine.
But people think, oh, yes, here you can get an MRI right away.
Not in Spain.
Okay?
It takes months to recall to have an MRI or something like that.
My husband's uncle was diagnosed with melanoma in February.
You know when he had the surgery?
At the end of June.
And by then, we were told that it was embedded on his head because he was the skin cancer.
But it was really bad.
And there was nothing they could do about it.
What happened?
He went right back.
He grew right back.
Why?
Because he did not get the surgery when he just had it.
Okay.
Delia in Miami.
Delia in Miami arguing against government having the responsibility for health care.
That is our conversation this morning.
Gene in Del Roy, Ohio, Democratic caller.
Gene, what do you say?
I would just like to point out that the government already takes a lot of the burden off of the insurance company.
They're already responsible.
When you get sick, you're too sick to work, you go on disability.
When you are old and you now have high medical expenses, I'm now 70.
I've never been sick in my life.
Wonderful.
What do they do to me?
Offload me into Medicare, right?
And I'm glad.
But I'm just saying, look at the disabled children that are born.
What happens to them?
They're put on disability.
So the insurance companies are skimming the cream off, okay?
That's my point.
So, Gene, what do you think about these health care industry, these companies then?
Oh, we lost her.
So we'll leave it at that.
Your calls, more of your calls this morning here on the Washington Journal in this first hour talking about health care and whether or not you think it's the federal government responsibility to provide it in this country.
Take a look at the headline in the Hill newspaper recently.
Will anger at health insurers spur actions?
Democrats, pessimistic.
Says Democrats are pessimistic that Congress will enact new rules around the health insurance industry, even as they try to appear responsive to growing calls for reform following the killing of the United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson.
Luigi Mangiani faces murder charges for the killing of Thompson on December 4th.
His death unleashed a torrent of anger on social media against the U.S. health system and insurance companies specifically.
It also opened an uncomfortable national discourse about whether the health executive deserves sympathy given his profits his company made while denying a relatively high percentage of claims.
This morning, is the federal government responsible for providing health care?
Janine in Kissimmee, Florida, Republican.
Hello, Janine.
Good morning to you.
Good morning to you as well.
Happy and Merry Christmas and Hanukkah to everybody.
I just want to say that there's several points here.
First of all, our government can't even run itself.
So why the heck do we want them running our health care?
Socialism, socialistic health care does not work.
And that's proven just as that one other caller just spoke about.
They're regarding a lot of people from Europe and those socialistic countries come to the United States because they can get immediate and they can get in immediately.
I had a friend who got diagnosed with cancer in England, and she came here to the United States because it was going to take a year just to see the oncologist, not to even start her treatment.
Here, I think insurance industries collect a lot of money, and people get misleaded.
Just like that guy who shot the CEO, a lot of people feel that, oh, you know, I'm buying into this health care, but all it is is healthy health care.
So you get your once-a-year evaluation, you get this, but they really don't cover you or they deny because you don't meet certain requirements.
And a lot of people don't understand that, that instead of going right away to get an MRI, you usually have to try medication and you have to try therapy, and they drag everything out.
And our insurance companies are still banging big bucks.
Look at your EOBs when they come in every month after you have an appointment.
They charge you $17,000.
Oh, no, here, my husband's going through chemo right now.
They charge $50,000 for a chemo session.
But when it goes through Medicare, it's only $1,000.
And then your Medigap or your Advantage picks up the other $200.
What the heck is this?
I mean, you know, why is it that they can charge this ridiculous amount, but yet they've already got contracts to pay?
Why isn't it always that cheap?
So, Janine, what do you think the solution is then?
If you don't think the federal government should provide it, then how do you negotiate those lower prices?
I bet if our legislators had the same insurance we did, I bet they'd figure something out because they get full coverage of everything.
They don't have the same coverage as regular people have.
They have a lot of special stuff going on.
What is the answer?
I think that we need to go back to rolling back and stop allowing the insurance companies to profit off of the taxpayers because we're constantly, and look at, look at, you've got people who say they're disabled.
My sister was a nurse.
She was taking care of a child who had some abnormalities when she got born.
The family was living big time off of the government that we pay when they could have been working and supporting themselves.
There's a lot of problems we have, and it's like, I think we need to go back to looking seriously at why we have to take care of everybody.
We are able people, and the people should be able to pay into their own funding as they're working.
There's got to be something else.
And I'm not an expert.
I'm not.
But I just see a lot of problems in our government.
Our government has a big problem.
They can't even take care of themselves.
Look at they print money up like it's nothing.
All right, Janine, I'm going to leave it at that.
Janine talking about her own experience, her husband's experience.
We want to hear those stories from you this morning as you tell us whether or not you think the federal government is responsible for health care in this country.
Back to that conversation in a minute, but want to share some headlines with you that are dominating the front pages of the national newspapers this morning and coverage of Capitol Hill.
We'll start with Politico and this story, Ethics Report, alleges Gates paid a 17-year-old for sex.
CNN reporting he paid for sex or drugs 20 times according to this report put out yesterday by the House Ethics Committee.
That was released yesterday and you can find that in the front pages of the newspapers as well.
And then this story from late yesterday afternoon, former President Bill Clinton hospitalized for observation and testing after developing a fever, seen and reporting this morning that he is expected to be home by Christmas.
He is alert and resting.
And then there is also this from the front pages, USA Today, President Biden commutes sentences of most federal death row inmates, except for three.
And then there's also this in the papers this morning and coverage of Capitol Hill.
Back to Politico, President-elect Trump's big Mike Johnson decision reports this morning that the president, president-elect, is not happy with Speaker Johnson, as well as some of his colleagues not happy with Speaker Johnson.
And Senator Ram Paul in the Hill newspaper predicts that the speaker will be ousted in 2025.
That vote takes place on January 3rd, opening day of the 119th Congress.
Have your televisions here on C-SPAN for live gavel-to-gavel coverage that day on January 3rd.
You can watch on c-span.org or on our free video mobile app, C-SPANNow.
I want to share also another headline with you this morning.
This related to our conversation about health care from NBC News.
Luigi Mangiani pleads not guilty to New York State charges and killing of that United Healthcare CEO, the Ivy League educated suspect, is accused of gunning down United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Midtown Manhattan sidewalk, pleading not guilty yesterday.
We'll go back to the phone calls in just a minute, but want to show you more from our archive speaker Mike Johnson on the campaign trail last fall previewing the GOP's health care overhaul plans when they take over or excuse me when they continue with their majority in the 119th Congress.
Healthcare reform is going to be a big part of the agenda.
When I say we're going to have a very aggressive first hundred days agenda, we've got a lot of things on the table.
But healthcare, that's part of the secret.
It's a secret.
Healthcare reform is not a secret.
There's some really important ideas on the table.
And we have a doc's caucus, physicians who serve in the House, and they've got a menu of options about this thick.
And I think this is part of it, because if you take government bureaucrats out of the healthcare equation and you have doctor-patient relationships, it's better for everybody, more efficient, more effective.
That's the free market.
Trump's going to be for the free market.
You heard a little sample of that last night.
We want to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state, okay?
I mean, these agencies are weaponized against the people.
It's crushing the free market.
It's like a boot on the neck of job creators and entrepreneurs and risk takers.
And so healthcare is one of the sectors, but we need this across the board.
And Trump's going to go big.
Promising a big agenda in the 119th Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson, along with President-elect Trump in the second administration.
This morning, we want to know from you, do you think health care is a federal government responsibility?
Adele in Illinois, Democratic caller.
Good morning to you.
Good morning, Ms. Karnataka.
Happy holidays, a happy new year to you and everybody at C-SPAN.
I wanted to say the caller before me started by saying a criticism of socialized medicine and then began to criticize the private insurance.
So I didn't quite understand that.
It doesn't make sense.
The insurance company's business model is they collect premiums from employers and us and they use that money to pay hopefully anytime that we need any type of coverage, they would be there for us.
But their model is based on denying that coverage so that the business itself can make money and have profits.
So if we're looking at insurance companies to make profits, their whole idea with Wall Street is for the shareholders, that is what you're supposed to be doing.
Well, Adele, if these insurance companies, though, don't scrutinize these claims, then would you have concerns there too?
If they don't scrutinize, people are making claims.
They could be false.
It could be fraudulent, etc.
And if they don't scrutinize every claim for fraud or false claims, then everybody's paying into a system.
The insurance company's paying out, and they're trying to protect, as you said, profits, but also the money that they pool.
Correct.
If, like Johnson said, leave it up to the patient and the physician, then that is where it should be.
But that's not where it is.
The physician then has to fight for that coverage.
And oftentimes, that's the case.
99.9% of the time, that's the case.
If we say an average denial for, I think it was Woodcloth Blue Shield, 7%, average for regular insurance, 16%, but United Health was 32%.
That means every third person that went with United, which is the largest provider, they're denying that coverage.
There has to be scrutiny there, Ms. Greta.
So if there is a profit model, and if you remove that and have a universal coverage for all people, and then have these knuckle-headed Republicans, the rich ones that say, I want privatized, then have an upper insurance for them that they have anytime that they want to go and see a doctor, any diagnostic that's done, they pay a little extra, have extra coverage.
We can use that private insurance for those who want to use it and afford it.
But in terms of coverage for any type, let's follow all of the other countries that use this model and say there are collective taxes that fund the VA, that fund Medicare, which both of those are good models.
We have other instances of government providing public schools, colleges.
All your community college is publicly funded.
Your K through 12th grade is funded.
So I think if you wanted to do it, you could do it.
But the concept itself needs to revise, and the American people need to look at it's health care.
It's not health profit.
And if we start from that discussion, and I don't believe this Republican Party is going to do anything to do this because their own, like he said, he got done saying this leave it up to the physician and that and the private sector in capitalism.
Well, capitalism is what we have right now in the insurance company.
All right.
Thank you, Dell and Ellen.
Same to you, related headline, New York Times.
United Healthcare has faced scrutiny over denying claims.
The company has been accused of using algorithms to deny treatments and refusing coverage of nursing care to stroke patients.
We'll go to Franklin in California, Republican.
Franklin, thank you for joining the conversation.
What do you think?
Good morning, Greta.
Good morning.
Happy holidays, America.
Can you hear me okay?
We can.
Okay, yeah, look, I don't have any easy, facile answers to this problem.
I know that our health care system, as it stands today, is an incredibly dysfunctional beast.
That clip you played earlier of Donald Trump, I do side with him because I think that the fact that he was standoffish and didn't try to attempt to give easy answers is appropriate because this is an intractable problem.
It's not an easy problem to solve.
And, you know, I you sorry, I see your lips moving.
Were you going to say no?
No, no, you're watching on a delay.
We're listening to you.
Go ahead.
Okay, so yeah, I have an anecdotal observation and a personal observation.
I'll try to keep it short because I know there's a lot of callers.
Okay, guy gets a snake bite in Georgia.
I read about this.
Walks into a hospital, or he was carried into a hospital, ends up with a bill for $75,000 for a snake bite.
Okay, I think people can use their own a priori logical reasoning and see that there's something out of line there.
I don't want to go so far as to use the word malfeasance or corruption, but that I don't know.
I'll call a spade a spade.
The healthcare system is gouging the health care payer.
And then my own personal experience here in Marin County, I had a case of high blood pressure.
My PCP said, yeah, you better go into the ER.
I went into the ER, and boy, they ran every test in the world.
I had a whole circle of doctors around my bed, and they put me through CAT scans, meningitis tests, and I walked out with like a $30,000 bill, you know.
And so my.
How much of it did you have to pay?
Oh, I was very fortunate.
I won't lie.
I only had to pay about $2,500 of it.
But I'm very fortunate in that regard.
I've mostly worked for a lot of Fortune 500 companies, even Fortune 100 companies, very good health care plans.
I have Aetna right now.
But I've been on the other side too, where I didn't have any health care and I was, you know, just, well, I went without health care, honestly, for a couple of years.
And if I had gotten sick or fallen downstairs, well, you know, that would have bankrupted me.
Yeah.
So go ahead, finish your thoughts.
Yeah, I don't know what the exact, okay.
So to your point, is government health care, is healthcare a government responsibility?
I would say the government is responsible for its reformation and overhaul, yes.
As to the degree it should be responsible, I don't have a quick answer to that.
I know a lot of people say, well, look at what's in Sweden, look at what's in Canada.
It's going to take some deep think on this from people who are smarter than me to figure this problem out.
All right, Franklin, I will leave it there.
We're talking about the healthcare industry this morning.
A couple of callers have brought up healthcare insurance and denied claims.
We showed you the headlines about United Healthcare and denied claims.
Take a look at the KaiserfamilyFoundation.org's website, claim denials and appeals in the ACA marketplace plans in 2021.
When you take a look at this graphic, look, they say healthcare.gov issuers denied 17% of in-network claims in 2021.
So take a look at that pie chart as you compare the Affordable Care Act to private health care insurance and our question this morning.
Should the government be responsible, the federal government, for providing health care?
Michael in Florida, Democratic caller.
Hi, Michael.
Hi, good morning.
How are you?
Morning.
I'm good.
The reason I'm calling is a few different things.
Healthcare has been an ongoing issue in this country for many years.
And it seems to me it all starts in Washington with the lobbyists.
Insurance industry has tremendous lobby in Washington, and they cater to the politicians.
The politicians cater to them.
And the first thing when a politician is elected to Congress or to the Senate, the first thing they ask is, where do I sign up for my health care?
Because they have the best health care.
Now, if there are politicians and there are leaders, if they get that health care, why don't they give it to the people they represent?
Why don't they do that?
Do the right thing.
Okay.
Mel in New York, Independent.
Mel, thank you for joining us this morning.
What do you say?
Health care does not belong in the federal government.
It should be managed by state government.
The reason I say that, the Constitution mentions nothing about health care.
Are we going to be a people who abide by it, or are we going to trust bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., politicians who make these deals, instead of doing it in a way where the free market is a much better option in that the states take care of it and see which state does the best?
If a state wants to have government control at all, everything, then fine.
If a state says no, let's operate by the free market and let people choose.
All right.
Mel in New York with his ideas of who should be responsible here.
Our question this morning: is the federal government responsible for providing health care?
We'll continue with your calls, your text messages, your posts here this morning on the Washington Journal.
I want to tell you, though, about some breaking news here from ABC News.
American Airlines requests ground stop for all of its flight.
According to the FAA, that was early this morning.
A technical issue disrupted American airline flights nationwide early this morning.
The airline said at the start of a busy Christmas Eve for travelers around the country.
The FAA said Americans requested a ground stop, that the American airlines requested a ground stop for all of its flights.
Your safety is our utmost priority.
Once this is rectified, we'll have you safely on your way to your destination.
A quote there from American Airlines.
Back to the conversation with all of you.
Tony in Buffalo, New York, Republican.
Good morning to you, Tony.
Good morning.
Good morning, ma'am.
Good morning, America.
On this beautiful Christmas Eve day.
I just like to state some facts.
You know, not opinion.
I know there's a lot of opinions going on this morning, but I'd like to state some facts.
During the Trump administration, okay, my health care as a single person was $5.42.
It is going up to $980, $980.
I mean, that's all, I do the math, it's a double.
And, you know, we all have to understand also, I disagree being in federal government.
First of all, where are we going to pull that out of with $36 trillion in the hole and to pay everybody, you know, be in the federal government's hands?
What I do think, and I do believe in President Trump, he needs to have a little roundtable discussion with all the drug companies, all the insurance companies, and stop the gouging.
Stop all the, like the one caller stated about all these lobbyists.
And, you know, enough is enough.
Sit down and like he is a deal maker, cut a deal and stop gouging the citizens of the United States of America.
All right, Tony, you and others might be interested in the year-end spending proposal that was debated and finally approved after several iterations last week.
Related to that debate was the pharmacy benefit manager.
There were reforms in the first year-end spending bill.
They were then dropped.
They failed to make the cut in the federal funding package.
For a moment, it looked like Congress would actually enact reforms of controversial pharmacy benefit managers after several years of introducing bills and holding hearings.
But it was not to be.
The state, the slate of measures that would have injected more transparency into the industry and changed some of its practices were stripped from the massive bipartisan government funding package that was torpedoed by President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.
The final vastly slimmed down legislation, which prevented the federal government from shuttering, was signed by President Joe Biden on Saturday.
The pharmacy benefit managers serve as middlemen between drug manufacturers and insurers, employers, and governments.
They negotiate rebates from pharmaceutical companies, determine which medications are covered by insurance plans, and pay pharmacies.
But they have raised the ire of Congress and others with their opaque practices.
The now dead funding deal would have required these PBMs to provide more information on the rebates they negotiate and retain, as well as what they pay for drugs and how much they compensate pharmacies.
It would have removed the connection between the price of drugs and the compensation the PBMs receive in Medicare Part D drug plans and shifted the payment model to flat fees.
That was not included or signed into law.
We'll go to Trish in Seattle Democratic College.
Trish, good morning to you.
Hey, happy Festivus, everybody.
Let's see.
So yeah, I'm a retired nurse.
I worked in research and my last gig was a case manager with a big insurance company up here in the Northwest where I just checked the CEO made $20 million last year.
I'm on Medicare.
I have an Advantage plan.
And let me tell you, it is not effective.
It is not watching out for the patient's best interests, ordering tests that don't need to be ordered in order to code the paperwork to a higher cost level.
So for example, I went in, had my annual Medicare, well, Medicare wellness check, and that's supposed to be free.
And then I got a bill for a $5 copay, and they had coded up the reason for that.
And I'm like, no, I'm not going to pay that.
I did not come in with anything brand new to discuss with you today.
And so between the doctors and billing departments, they will find a way to upcode your billing charge to make you pay more or get less service.
And regarding health care, let's look at women's health care, particularly maternal child care welfare and care.
Don't see anybody rolling around with that one about women can't get treated properly if they have a problem with their pregnancy.
It's just like, oh, well, we'll just wait, see what happens.
All right.
Trish in Seattle there on the floor recently of the House, Democrat from California, RoConna, earlier this month was talking about the anger toward health insurance companies.
Here's what he had to say.
Across our land, there is outrage at national health insurance companies, private health insurance companies that are denying claims, denying claims for heart disease, denying claims for cancer, denying claims for diabetes.
Mr. Speaker, the average cancer patient in America will lose their entire life savings in two years.
42% of Americans who have cancer lose their life savings in two years.
Mr. Speaker, 18% of Americans have had their health care claims denied.
Over 3.4 million Americans.
On a very small matter, I had my health care claim denied by United Healthcare when I wanted to get a $100 nasal pump for allergies.
Back it came denied, and I couldn't get that reversed.
Imagine people with more serious problems.
One of the people who died in my district, Sarah Bounton, she died of a sinus infection because her health insurance companies denied her claims for basic health care.
As Americans face denial after denial after denial, what is happening with these private insurance companies?
Let me tell you, $1.4 trillion in revenue, $70 billion in profits for the top seven private insurance companies.
Now they say, oh, it's only 5% profit, but it's $1.4 trillion sucked out of our economy while basic Americans are denied health care.
And what is this money going to?
It's going to administrative costs.
It's going to advertising.
It's going to bloated executive pay salaries.
While we can't give people treatment for cancer, for diabetes, for basic health issues, the American people are outraged and they're rising up across our country demanding fundamental change to a broken health care system.
Enough.
Congressman Brokana on the floor of the House of Representatives earlier this month talking about the anger toward health care industries.
This morning, do you think the federal government should be responsible for our health care in this country?
Here are some posts this morning on X. One of our viewers says, any government that provides free coverage for illegals and other benefits, but not its citizens, is incapable of rationally and impartially managing the citizens.
And then another viewer says, texts in to say, I believe as a civilized society, we should at least start our children off on the right and healthy track, a national health care system for zero to five year olds.
That's Kristen in Portland, Maine.
Patty in Wisconsin, a healthcare, retired health care worker.
Good morning to you, Patty.
Good morning to you, Greta.
Thank you for the excellent reporting.
It's tragic that this CEO was assassinated to bring attention to the injustices in the health care system.
I worked for many years in large major hospitals and in some smaller rural hospitals.
There is discrimination.
If I could wave a magic wand, I would have everyone who walks into a facility get excellent health care.
I've seen discrimination.
It's tragic when a couple of doctors will get together in the corner and say, well, this person doesn't have insurance.
They're this, they're that.
They're low socioeconomic.
And then there's a discussion whether to further treatment that may save their lives.
You've witnessed those conversations, Patty.
Absolutely, absolutely.
I'm the nurse standing by.
What am I supposed to do?
Do I continue on with treatment or do I step back?
Don't they learn?
Do they have a responsibility to treat?
I mean, don't they have an ethical code?
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
We all do.
And interestingly enough, if you're of wealth, they will charge you more to cover their losses on someone who walked in without insurance.
How do they do that?
How do they do that?
They just do it through billing.
And I came upon it accidentally, and it was in a Christian facility.
How did you come up to explain?
What did you discover?
The head nun doing paperwork.
And I had to move some papers over to get at my charting on the night shift.
And I kind of looked at it, the paperwork, just briefly standing up, and I saw the name that I knew.
And Sister explained, and she said that's the name of the game.
So just explain a little bit more.
That's the name of the game.
What did she mean?
Just that you have to compensate.
This particular patient was of means, and he had the ability to pay because of his insurance and his position in the community.
And so the ones with lesser insurance or no insurance, he covered their expenses for the facility.
So the insurance company doesn't see these different rates that the facility was charging?
Apparently not.
Apparently not.
But that being said, and then I also have a number of family members retired and in the VA system.
And even though they served in the military, they have to battle to get their payments through the VA.
To me, if you're a veteran, you have a card, you walk in, everything's taken care of.
We can manage this.
Just eliminate the middleman.
So God bless you for reporting, and I'll be listening to the next callers.
Thank you, Greta.
Patty in Wisconsin.
Kevin, Charlotte, North Carolina, Independent.
Hi, Kevin.
Hi, Greta.
Thanks for taking my call.
Good morning.
Most of the people in this country are covered by either Medicare, Medicaid, ACA, or employer insurance.
All of it is subsidized.
All of it is controlled by the government.
The first three are obvious, but the problem employer, people don't understand.
You know, the taxpayers are paying for that.
100% of that is a write-off for the corporations.
That means that the taxpayer is paying for that.
And, you know, I just think that people don't open their eyes to that.
When they say a private employer, they don't consider it being government subsidized, but it actually is.
So I'm just a quick search here, Caller.
And from what I found, in the United States, most people get health insurance through their employer.
In 2023, 53.7% of the population had employment-based insurance.
You said it's coming from the government in some sort of way.
It is because these companies write off every nickel, dime, and quarter on their taxes that they pay for that.
That's coming from the people, from the taxpayers.
On that end of it.
Okay, Stuart in Nebraska, Republican.
Hi, Stuart.
Yes, ma'am.
I consider myself the most fortunate person you're going to talk to on the phone about this today.
Okay, my Social Security check is only $1,250, which means that I am eligible for Nebraska Medicaid and Medicare.
And it's all subsidized, and I get subsidized.
I live in a housing and urban development apartment, a condominium that pays all rent and utilities for $377 a month.
All my medical bills are paid, and I'm getting United Healthcare, their supplementary deal, which I don't really need because I'm going to get $200 a month in free groceries down at the store.
Plus, they supply, if I have to go to the doctor, they supply the transportation to the doctor.
I've had Stents put in hundreds, thousands and thousands of dollars, and I didn't even have to pay a co-payment.
What a wonderful country we live in, huh?
So, Stuart, do you agree with this?
Do I agree with this?
I mean, some would say that's the safety net at work, right?
You don't make enough money, or you make a certain amount of money, so the safety net kicks in in all these different ways.
Right.
That's what I'm saying.
What a wonderful country.
You know, okay, they just shot down an Air Force plane that costs $50 million, right?
So all this money is government money.
Plus, we're $35 trillion in debt, and they just added another $200 billion on the deficit.
This isn't going to last very much longer.
We're living in, really, if you read the book, The Last Days of the Roman Empire, you know, we're living in the last days of it, and, you know, I'm grateful for what I have.
Okay, Stuart, there in Nebraska.
We showed you what President-elect Donald Trump had to say in a recent interview with NBC about his plans for health care.
Health and Human Services Secretary Becerra, recently speaking at a public health symposium at Johns Hopkins University, had this to say about the Biden administration's record on health care.
Today, in America, there are more Americans who have a chance to go to a doctor or to visit a hospital and leave their child there and not worry about going bankrupt.
More people in America today can do that than ever in the history of the United States.
More than 300 million Americans today have their own health insurance, whether it's private or whether it's public.
But they have their own health insurance, which means they can walk into a doctor's office without bowing their head.
They can leave their child in that hospital without worrying whether they'll be able to pay the mortgage or the rent because they come with coverage.
That has never happened in this country before.
Today, in America, We are inventing the next generation of medicines and vaccines that will continue to save lives.
Today in America, we're developing some of the best ways to move our country's health system from one that treats illness to one that promotes wellness.
Outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary of Becerra talking about the Biden administration's record on health care.
We're asking you this morning, should the federal government provide it?
Liz in New York, Democratic caller.
Hi, Liz.
Hi, how are you?
Morning.
My belief is that, yes, health care is a human right and that the federal government should provide it.
The reason is the federal government doesn't have a profit motive like all of these other insurance companies.
If you're on traditional Medicare, not Medicare Advantage, you are getting some of the best health care in America.
It's an efficient system.
There's very little fraud and waste because we root it out and we can do this.
Taxpayers are going to pay for this, whether we pay through employer health care getting tax credits, or we pay through Medicaid because people don't have coverage, or we pay through our Medicare taxes.
So the cost is going to be borne by the American taxpayer.
It just depends upon how and whether or not we're going to pay a CEO for an insurance company $20 million a year, and we're going to put money in the coffers of all of these insurance companies.
I just, if we take the profit motive out, healthcare will be better.
All right, Liz in New York, Democratic caller.
Here is Mark in Canada saying, speaking as a Canadian physician, it's unconscionable to take advantage of human misery.
Collective responsibility with no expectation of profit is the best way to do it.
Like it or not, that means society-wide, and that means government, he writes in.
Carrie in Arlington, Texas.
Good morning to you, Carrie.
Hello.
Carrie, your healthcare worker.
I want to just point out a few things.
A general outline that we owe it to Franklin Roosevelt, LBJ, and Barack Obama, everything we have to aid our health care.
Further, I just want to suggest to the audience: perhaps someone in New York or D.C. has a contact with either Hillary Clinton or some of her workers and help her with her investigation on this subject.
You will not find a better informed person in the world.
And thank you very much for taking my call.
Have a great day.
Same to you.
Ann in New Mexico, Independent.
Ann, what do you say about this?
So right now I'm in the hospital just getting over surgery, which would not have been, according to Blue Cross Bruce Shield, would not have been covered because they went over if that new law would have been passed.
So that made me realize that right now I think ultimately the government should be responsible.
However, I would look at a transition time whereas it would regulate the cost instead and front with the costs of it and then move into a single payer afterwards during the transition.
Can't do anything cold turkey the way everything is right now.
Another thing is when I had, I have PPO, and I took my two children to the doctor for a well check, and each of them had a separate bill that was differently coded than the other one for the exact same thing.
So that's why I think there should be some sort of oversight on the insurance industry that includes more of the codes that they use.
Well, I don't believe they do.
It's the doctor, the doctor who's putting in those codes or the hospital administrators who are putting in those codes.
So oversight over them as well.
Gorn, what sort of codes can be used?
Got it, sad for the same exact procedure.
All right.
And I just went in, though.
And in New Mexico, we wish you a speedy recovery there.
Eric in Tennessee, Democratic caller.
Hi, Eric.
Hello.
I did a little quick research, and I'm sure it's not perfectly accurate, but it looks like maybe $7,500 to stay in a hospital bed overnight on average across the United States.
And that has to be paid by somebody.
And the problem is, if you look at Canada, and I've got personal experience there, and Europe, a lot of those systems, you get really good emergency hospitalization treatment.
But anything that would be a scheduled procedure, you get, it's rationed and you get put on the interminable waiting list.
And it's all about cost.
And, you know, the money doesn't grow on trees.
And you've got to tax the citizenry if they want that kind of, you know, coverage for everything.
And the people, regular people, can't afford it.
All right.
So that's the problem.
And we saw that with HCA, Obamacare.
You know, the cost just, you know, it skyrocketed.
Anyway.
All right.
Thanks, Eric.
A few minutes left here in this conversation.
This morning in our first hour of the Washington Journal here on C-SPAN over on C-SPAN 2, you may have noticed our promotion here on the screen.
There is a marathon session of the Trump nominees, those that President-elect Donald Trump have put forth to serve in his cabinet in their own words.
We're digging into the C-SPAN archives to show you what these nominees have said over the years, either about policy, politics, or the president-elect himself.
In their own words, all-day marathon today and this whole week here on C-SPAN 2.
You can watch on our free video mobile app, C-SPANNOW, or online at c-span.org.
Those are the folks on your screen that we are featuring today.
Pete Hegseth, Doug Collins, and Scott Turner.
You can find it all online at c-span.org.
Joe in Maryland, an independent.
Hi, Joe.
Hello.
I just wanted to say that last year when I wasn't doing too well financially, I was briefly on Medicaid, I think it is, is the one for people without money or Medicare, Medicaid.
Always get that mixed up.
But it was, frankly, the best health care I've ever had.
And it just things were made easy instead of difficult.
And honestly, you know, now that I'm doing better, I look at my insurance now and I would gladly pay, you know, the same amount or whatever a fair market rate would be to have the same health care that I had under Medicaid.
So tell me, Joe, what made it easy?
There weren't the same, you know, back and forth with insurers.
There weren't any, the copays were a dollar.
You know, everything was covered instead of covering 80%, leaving you with still, you know, really deep financial hardships.
If something bad happens to you, 20% of a huge amount of money is still a large amount of money.
But, you know, I don't know what all the things that go into medical costs are.
It seems like a very tangled system, but I don't see why we have to have entirely government-sponsored health care and nothing else.
But why not let the federal government compete?
You know, they're a large agency that's a competent system.
Why not let them compete in the same way that private companies do?
I would gladly buy in or pay taxes for it.
You're talking about then perhaps the way that works is if you remove the employer-based insurance, that just like with car insurance, you go and you find the best deal that works for you rather than getting the insurance through your employer.
I think that employer-based insurance is an odd set of things to weld together.
Why not?
Yeah, it seems like an unnecessary extra step in the system.
And, you know, furthermore, I would like to be able to buy from the government because it seems that they have the system that works best for the average American.
Got it.
Got it, Joe.
I'm going to leave it at that.
We are at the top of the hour, 8 a.m. here on the East Coast.
Coming up next, we continue with this week's Holiday Author Series here in the Washington Journal: Eight Days of Conversations with America's top writers from across the political spectrum on a variety of public policy and political topics.
After the break, we'll be joined by author and journalist Ray Suarez discussing his book, We Are Home, Becoming American in the 21st Century, an Oral History.
We'll be right back.
During Christmas week, each night at 9 p.m. Eastern, C-SPAN will feature interviews with departing members of Congress, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents from both chambers.
They'll discuss their careers, key legislative achievements, the state of Congress, and American politics, and their farewell speeches.
Tonight, California Democratic Congresswoman Anna Eshu and Washington Republican Congresswoman Kathy McMorris-Rogers.
Wednesday, North Carolina Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry, Michigan Democratic Congressman Dan Kildie, and Oregon Democratic Congressman Earl Blumenauer.
Thursday, Michigan Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow and Pennsylvania Democratic Senator Bob Casey.
Friday, Delaware Democratic Senator Tom Carper and California Democratic Congresswoman Grace Napolitano.
Watch our interviews with departing members discussing their careers in Congress this week.
Starting at 9 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at cspan.org.
Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, Don Scott, Virginia's newly elected Democratic Speaker of the House of Delegates and the state's first black speaker in 405 years, talks about his life, including spending almost eight years in prison.
I had never been in trouble before.
I had served my country, and I was hoping that I would get a little bit more grace and maybe get the judge has some latitude to go before it.
And he probably could have given me even more time than he did.
But I remember hearing my mother, when he said 10 years, you know, she couldn't believe it.
And that yelp of pain.
It always stays with me.
And it's always motivating.
It always lets me know how fragile our freedom is and how perilous it is.
And if you make one wrong move sometimes, it could be literally the end of your life as you know it.
Virginia's Democratic House Speaker, Don Scott, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
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Washington Journal continues.
Washington Journal's annual Holiday Authors Week series continues this morning.
Eight days of conversations with America's top writers from across the political spectrum on a variety of public policy and political topics.
And this morning, we want to welcome author and former PBS News Hour chief national correspondent Ray Suarez.
His book, We Are Home, Becoming American in the 21st Century, an oral history.
Mr. Suarez, good morning to you.
Why did you decide to write this book?
I guess one of the conception moments for a book like this was when I was sitting in my living room watching the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and watched a long torchlight parade of young men chanting, you will not replace us.
And I knew something had gotten really off track in the American, the great American family fight over immigration.
And I started to wool gather the way you do when you're starting a book project, clipping out articles, saving files, and starting to write a pitch.
And things only got worse from there on as the worldwide crisis in sudden migration, people fleeing their home countries got worse.
And America really, it wasn't a great moment for the way we handled it and the way we talked to each other about it.
When you started your research then, what did you find?
That immigrants to the United States, and there have been a lot of them in the last two generations, have higher levels of workforce participation, lower levels of involvement with the criminal justice system, and higher levels of education than earlier generations of immigrants.
They are undoubtedly a net plus to the United States.
And at the same time, because for the first time in our history, most immigrants to the United States are not white, we have a much more conscious feeling of the presence of a different kind of people among us that's causing social anxiety, cultural anxiety.
And again, the panic that accompanies that idea that America will be a non-white majority nation in the future has led us to some places where the way we handle immigration, the way we set policy around immigration, has not really been best for the country or best for the immigrants.
I want to read from the book for our viewers, We Are Home.
The idea that dark forces are engineering demographic change in the United States to the detriment of whites of European origin by encouraging high rates of immigration to shift the balance of political power in the United States has moved from the fringes of American ideological battles to somewhere much closer to the emotional center.
As Tucker Carlson climbed the greasy pole at Fox News Channel, he frequently told his audience, among the largest in cable television history, that the Democratic Party was trying to replace the current U.S. electorate with new people, more obedient voters from the third world.
And that's a quote that you pull from Tucker Carlson.
So do you blame the media and is it the conservative media?
Well, in part, I mean, the great replacement theory needs oxygen to get traction, to move, as I mentioned in the book, from the fringes of American discourse to the center of it.
And it's personalities like Tucker Carlson who have given the great replacement theory that kind of attention that gives it currency, that gives it power, that gives it the kind of cultural currency that it might not have had otherwise.
And it is an ugly, un-American, anti-American idea that the new arrivals, unlike those from Palermo and Warsaw and Dublin of 120 years ago, that these people can never get the hang of being part of us.
That's, I think, part of the ugliest part of this whole idea about new immigrants.
That while my great-grandparents or my great-great-grandparents could get the hang of being American, these new people from these new places won't.
And that really needs some examination.
People have to ask themselves why they believe that when so many millions of immigrants are succeeding so phenomenally in our country.
How does your book tell the opposite of that?
Well, it does a deep dive.
I spent a lot of time with immigrants from recent decades, talking to them about why they came, how they got here, how they got the hang of being here, what they make of the place, how they feel about being American.
And you come away with a kind of heartening, encouraging idea about the future.
Listen to the immigrants themselves.
They realize this country is a hard place to get ahead.
They realize that it takes a phenomenal amount of hard work to get here and start with very little and make a secure life for yourself.
The othering of these new people, casting them into some new place in our history that's different from our own ancestors, is really doing them a disservice.
Tell us one story.
I begin the book with a guy who came from Kenya at the age of 18 from Mombasa, a city on the Indian Ocean.
He was from the very, very old Arab community in Kenya, so he was not a black African.
His name was Samir.
He came to Columbia, Maryland, as he finished high school, and he was immersed in American pop culture and thought he would immediately get the hang of being here.
And before long, he was working two full-time jobs: one doing the breakfast run at McDonald's.
He would go home, get a couple of hours' nap, and then do another shift at the convenience store, Wawa.
There he is, working 80 hours a week, going slightly crazy.
And his answer is to join the United States Army.
And the stories he tells about being a brand spanking new resident of the United States and a member of the United States Army are sort of touching and hilarious at the same time.
He gets shipped out to Korea, and they often pair American units with Korean counterparts so they can work together.
And his Korean soldiers all have relatives in the United States, and they're asking him, pumping him for information about what it's like to live in America.
And he finally had to tell them, I don't know what it's like to live in America.
I was there a couple of months and then I joined the Army.
He has an amazing story with, I think, a very redemptive ending.
He goes and protests at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., against the Muslim ban, the Trump-era policy that blocked arrivals from majority Muslim countries, and realizes that he couldn't do that in his own country.
He would be surveilled.
He would be photographed.
He would be tracked.
He was there with all kinds of other people protesting against this policy with his son.
They made cardboard signs at home and ran down to the airport.
And he had been ambivalent after 9-11, 11 with the rise of anti-Muslim feeling.
And he said he felt very American at that moment with the freedom to protest, the freedom to be seen in public, opposing the government and a government policy.
And his son is now in the Maryland National Guard.
Our guest this morning, Ray Suarez, author of the book, We Are Home, Becoming American in the 21st Century in Oral History, part of our holiday authors series this week.
Ray Suarez is also the host of On Shifting Ground with Ray Suarez, the podcast.
We wanted to have you join us in the conversation this morning.
We're talking about immigration and immigration policy.
Here's how you can do so.
Republicans dial in at 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8002.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
We're going to get to your calls in just a minute.
Reyes Wars, I want to show our viewers and have you respond to President-elect Donald Trump.
He was at Turning Point USA on Sunday, and this is what he had to say about his border and mass deportation proposal.
On my first day back in the Oval Office, I will sign a historic slate of executive orders to close our border to illegal aliens and stop the invasion of our country.
And on that same day, we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
And as part of Operation Aurora, you know all about Aurora, how horrible that's been.
Every single foreign gang and illegal alien member, all of this criminal network operating on American soil will be dismantled, deported, and destroyed.
Gonna get them out.
Think of it.
They sent their gang members to us.
Busload after busload.
We had an open border.
They're gang members, they're drug dealers, they're drug addicts, people that were sick, people that were healthy and strong.
What the hell was that?
You get the little yips up here, every once in a while.
I wonder why.
It was a strange sound.
I've heard some very strange sounds.
Every foreign gang member will be expelled, and I will immediately designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
We're going to do it immediately.
And we'll unleash the full power of federal law enforcement, ICE, Border Patrol.
How good is, by the way, how good is Tom Holman, right?
He's phenomenal.
I've known him a long time.
I'll bet you Sheriff Joe likes Tom Holman, right?
Sheriff Joe, yes, yep.
He goes, yep.
The DEA, the FBI, the intelligence community, and financial sanctions to remove the migrant gangs and criminals that are killing and raping and maiming our citizens.
We're going to get them out.
We're going to get them out.
We're going to get them out fast.
We have no choice.
We have no choice, by the way.
I don't want to do that, but we have no choice.
President-elect Donald Trump from this weekend.
Reyes Wars, when you hear the President-elect talk about border proposals, the mass deportation plan that he ran on, and he won.
What goes through your head after writing this book?
Well, it's part of a very ugly American tradition.
In the second half of the 19th century, tens of millions of people came to this country, mostly from Europe.
And people who were not happy about that said that they were diseased, criminals, and bringing foreign ideas and foreign ideologies to the United States, basically making the U.S. a less happy place by being here, instead of making it an economic superpower, which they did by coming here and going to work.
It's really running the 19th century playbook again.
Instead of admitting that of these hundreds of thousands of people who've made it across the border and go to work picking your crops, bussing your tables, pounding roof shingles, and running electrical wire, he makes it sound like they're all members of criminal gangs.
Now, obviously, some of them are members of criminal gangs, and some of them are criminals.
But the stuff during the campaign about emptying out insane asylums and emptying out prisons and citing certain countries from which an infinitesimal number of immigrants come, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he kept bringing up Congo.
What was that all about?
Think about that.
It was really a disheartening display.
I don't know if he doesn't know or if he knows and he says it anyway, but it was just a pastiche of untruth and fantasy, lurid fantasy about who comes to the United States, how they get here.
We've never had an open border.
The border has never been more heavily patrolled.
And at the same time, the border has never been under heavier stress.
Why?
Because there's a worldwide migration crisis, not because the United States is peculiarly or particularly open.
They've got the same problem in Turkey.
They've got the same problem in Greece.
They've got the same problem in Italy.
They've got the same problem in France and Great Britain.
The idea that the United States, one of the biggest and most powerful countries in the world, with one of the largest populations in the world, was somehow going to sail by while 25% of the entire population of Venezuela left the country because it's a cratering, failing state.
Whoever came up with that idea, of course, the United States was going to be put under pressure.
The developed world is being put under pressure, and even many much poorer countries is being put under pressure by what's going on around the world right now.
Ray Suarez is our guest.
He is the author of the book, We Are Home, Becoming American in the 21st Century.
We want to have a conversation with all of you this morning about immigration and immigration policy.
We'll go to Joe in Plainfield, New Jersey.
Hi, Joe.
Welcome.
Good morning.
Thank you for having me.
It's actually North Plainfield.
Good morning, Mr. Suarez.
I know you're working on PBS.
I'm calling because I wanted to address two issues.
I'm wondering if your book at all addresses the fact that many people come here, particularly from south of the United States and South America,
because of the economic issues that they were facing, not only because of drug cartels, et cetera, et cetera, but also because of the fact that many people there suffered under Americans' practices of coming in and taking their products out of their countries at a reduced price that made it profitable for the United States.
I'd like to know if your book addresses that.
And I'd also like to know if your book addresses the kind of if becoming American in the United States also requires in many ways the idea that you must take on the morals and in some ways the prejudices that Americans, the dominant American culture, has.
Because I noticed that you mentioned that the person you just talked about profiling, you mentioned that he was not a black African.
And I'm wondering, and I see how often, probably because people want to don't want to be seen in a certain light themselves and issue their other people's views of them as immigrants and all of the prejudices that go along with that.
But I also see that many times immigrants take on the prejudices that are already here in America and dismiss people because of their color.
And I'm wondering if your book addresses that as well.
And I'm going to hang up with you.
Thank you.
Well, thank you very much for your call and thank you very much for your question.
One of the chapters in the book is specifically about black immigration to the United States, particularly from Africa.
I think it is a remarkable and redemptive story that after America's very tangled and very unhappy history with race and particularly with slavery, that now, today in America, one out of every ten black people in the United States is an immigrant and one out of five black people in the United States is either an immigrant or the child of black immigrants.
So immigration from the Caribbean and particularly from Africa is soaring.
And there are now among us people who are ready to throw in their lot and do the work of being a newcomer to the United States from Nigeria, from Liberia, from Senegal, from Ethiopia.
I profile some of those people in the book and talk about how many of them are aware when they come to the United States, very aware of this country's history.
And they set it aside.
They assume that the country is a better place today.
And I talk at length to a Nigerian oncologist working in Chicago, an Ethiopian who came during the Ethiopian Civil War because they were recruiting child soldiers and his family sent him out of the country.
And he went to high school in the United States and then to college.
And when he watched the World Trade Center fall in Lower Manhattan on a beautiful work day in September of 2001, he realized this was his country.
This was the country that he knew as an adult.
And his fantasies about going home to Ethiopia, his dream of someday going home an educated person and getting back to work in Ethiopia, really weren't going to happen.
And he became a United States citizen at that point.
A man who came from Senegal, when all his friends were aspiring to immigrate to France, he said, no, I want to go to America.
And he had it as a dream all through college.
He became an English teacher in Senegal and then won the diversity lottery, got a visa and came to the United States and before too long, did a long hitch in the Army and now lives in Harlem and is a religious teacher.
So a wide variety of stories.
Color is very much a part of this story because until the post-Civil War constitutional amendments, only white people could naturalize.
If you came here from anywhere else in the world, you could only become a citizen if you were white.
Chinese were specifically barred.
Then later, Asians more generally were specifically barred from naturalizing, from becoming citizens.
And I tell the story of how our concept of widening the net has been a steady progression over the last century.
And now people are coming here from everywhere to become citizens.
And it's changing what we look like as people, changing our image to the rest of the world.
But color is very much a part of this story because American law was very much obsessed with color for a long time.
And that's changed.
And we're a better place for it.
Ray Suarez is our guest this morning talking about immigration.
The lines are regional this morning, eastern central part of the country, 202-748-8000.
Mountain Pacific, 202-748-8001.
And if you are an immigrant to the United States, we want to hear from you at 202-748-8002.
Brad in Texas.
Good morning to you, Brad.
Go ahead.
Good morning to you.
The gentleman, he lives in La La Land.
I've lived among immigrants.
I've seen them given their color is their advantage.
They're given affirmative action.
They're put in med schools.
They're put in law schools.
They destroy our elementary schools.
My mom was a teacher for 30 years.
She had to get out because they're not to a benefit of the American people.
Why so, Brad?
Why do you say that?
Because I see them every day.
They live better than the Americans.
They have a man that's out working.
They have a woman with four or five kids getting welfare.
It's almost always that way.
That's why it's over 70% of all immigrants are on welfare.
These people are living off the flood of America with immigrants.
Ray Suarez.
Okay, Brad, we'll get Ray Suarez's response.
Well, it's checkable, and it's simply not true that 70% of immigrants are on welfare.
Immigrants, whether naturalized American citizens or legal permanent residents, or certainly undocumented, are simply not qualified.
They're not allowed to take advantage of a lot of social welfare programs.
I'm talking to you this morning, not from La La Land, but from New York City, a city where 40% of all the residents were born somewhere else outside the United States.
Out of a city of 8.5 million people, that's about 4 million people.
600,000 of them, or roughly the size of an entire city of Milwaukee, are undocumented immigrants.
And this is a bustling, hardworking city.
Do people cheat?
Yeah.
People cheat to get benefits.
Native-born people cheat?
Foreign-born people cheat.
Some.
There's some cheating in the system.
But this idea that immigrants just flood in and then don't do anything, you just got to look.
You look at the world that you live in, in restaurants, in travel, in parking garages.
Everywhere you go in big metropolitan areas, there are people who were born somewhere else doing jobs that were happy that there's somebody to do.
When unemployment is at 4%, you've got to wonder just how many of these people are taking jobs that Americans want.
Do some of them?
Yeah.
Probably in construction and in transportation and in other specific job categories.
There are probably jobs that Americans would like to compete for and either don't or feel that the wages have been bid down by the presence of an immigrant workforce.
But a lot of that work is not work that our caller from Texas is dying to get out there and do.
Reyes Juarez, perception is reality.
So how do you then tell the story that you're telling so that people understand from what you found out about why immigrants are coming here and what they are doing when they get here?
Well, as an earlier caller alluded to, a lot of them come from places that have long and troubled histories with the United States.
And one of the people I profile in the book, Jaime, came to the United States because his country, El Salvador, was mired in a terrible, destructive, blood-leading civil war.
At the end, and he started as a student and then an office cleaner. in Washington, D.C. At the end, he reflected on his American life.
All of his kids have gone to college and done quite well.
He said, would I have liked to continue growing up in El Salvador and having a life there among my family and everything I knew in my own hometown?
He said, yeah, that would have been great.
But that was not possible.
It just wasn't possible.
Nellie came during the worst years of the Lebanese Civil War, and she didn't want to leave her country.
Her family forced her to go.
They said, we've got to get out of here.
She was from the Armenian minority in Beirut, and they moved to Los Angeles, and she hated it and eventually got the hang of it.
During the Iranian revolution, a couple, the Mars, came to Texas.
She was a trained and qualified nurse from Scotland.
Her husband was a librarian from the countryside in Iran.
They didn't want to leave Iran.
They didn't want to come to the United States.
But they had to get out of Iran.
And they came here and they went to Texas because there were Texas hospitals that really needed nurses.
And they were glad to have her.
People come for a variety of reasons.
They come in a variety of ways, legal and illegal.
You've got to admit that, yes, some of them come in ways that are contrary to the law.
But a lot of the people I spoke to came with a real desire to get their lives in order, and they saw the United States as a way to do that.
They saw the United States as a place where people like themselves could succeed.
This, you know, there's a lot of countries in the world that people look at and say, that's not a place I want to move to.
And that's not a place where I can live out my dreams.
And that's not a place that's going to let me live out my aspirations.
I wrote a chunk of this book while working as a teacher in China.
China has a very different attitude toward immigration and toward immigrants.
And part of the strength of the United States, one advantage it has over its competitor, China, is that we make immigrants into Americans.
And you could live for decades in China and you'd still be a foreigner.
You were teaching English in China.
Is that what you just said?
No, I was teaching in the political science department at NYU in Shanghai.
And when was this?
In 2022, during the pandemic.
And that shaped, that was part of that experience, what shaped this book?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Because it forced me, living as a foreigner in a big, complicated society like China, really helped crystallize my thinking as I was writing about what it means to be a foreigner in a place and how a foreigner is regarded and welcomed.
And what does it even mean to be foreign?
It was a very clarifying experience.
Let me put it that way.
We'll go to Ian next, who's in Jacksonville, Florida.
Hi, Ian.
Hello.
Morning.
Go ahead with your question or comment.
So, I think everyone realizes that we want people to come to this country legally.
But the issue is it's the people that don't want to assimilate.
It's the people wanting to commit crimes.
I mean, we're seeing it in New York.
We've seen it with the woman that was lit on fire on Subway.
These things are horrible.
And this is becoming more evident.
But another issue is we're seeing it all over Europe.
We're seeing it in Germany in the Christmas market.
We're seeing it in France.
We're seeing it in England.
People are getting tired of this.
That's the issue.
We want these people, if they're coming here, to assimilate.
Look at Japan.
If you actually go and you stay there permanently, you have to assimilate.
All right, let's take that.
Ian, we'll take that concept.
Reyes Wars.
I think part of that is scale.
I think Ian is onto something.
There is a moment of reckoning in the countries that he mentioned.
Germany took in a large number of refugees from the Syrian civil war.
And there's a great deal of political back and forth inside and some soul-searching inside Germany about whether that was the right thing to do at that scale and whether or not those immigrants are succeeding.
In France, similarly, there are, and there have been for decades now, arguments inside French society about the scale and extent of immigration to largely French cities and in Britain, similarly, all over the Anglosphere, in Australia and Canada as well.
So, yeah, I mean, Ian's absolutely right.
And the idea that people don't acculturate, don't assimilate, is, I think, encouraged in every encounter you have with an immigrant who's not totally fluent in English yet.
Every person that you see on the street who wears the garb and outwardly appears foreign, wears the garb of their country, maybe a headscarf or a hijab.
The presence of immigrants among us does not require, I think there's a new model for immigration.
Language acquisition is going on at the same speed that it did with earlier generations of immigrants.
This idea that they come here and never speak English is not, it wasn't true in 1920, and it wasn't true in 2020.
What's different is that modern communications and modern commerce offers immigrants a way to stay fluent and stay current in their home languages that wasn't available to someone who came to the United States in 1910.
So Spanish language networks, cable television in Farsi and Arabic and Urdu.
These were things that weren't part of the scene with earlier immigration.
So an immigrant can remain who they were and take on the culture of the United States instead of being forced to set aside everything they were before they came here.
It's more a la cardee.
It's really up to the immigrant how much of their home culture they want to retain.
Some people jump in with both feet and set aside who they were immediately.
They want to be American.
And others want to be who they were and take on this new thing.
And they learn English and they live among us and they get the hang of being American the same way that people from Poland and Italy and Romania did.
We'll go to Joyce next, who's in Las Vegas.
Morning to you, Joyce.
Good morning.
We're listening, Joyce.
Question or comment here.
Oh, good morning, Mr. Juarez.
I was wondering, I wonder why America do not have open borders.
And I hear that all the time.
Even that's why I guess the election was won by Mr. Trump.
But why won't, why don't, I don't understand why the media or people just tell the truth.
We do not have open borders, but we have an area where the people can come in on the border legally and apply for legal citizenship.
But when they say we're going to, what they're talking about is getting rid of the people that come over illegally through water.
But it's not the America's the only one that that's happening.
That's happening in other countries, just like you said.
I have not read your book, but I'm going to get it and read it.
And I would just hope that the media would just say, we do not have open borders in America.
All right, Joyce, we'll take that.
Ray Suarez.
Well, I think she's really on to something important.
The Republicans very potently and very effectively used the idea of open borders in this past election.
And as the caller points out, they really benefited from it.
And the Democrats were almost supine on this issue, did not punch back, did not point out that there are more agents on the border than there have ever been in our history.
More surveillance cameras, more heat sensing technology that in the night can figure out if bodies are moving across the border.
More encounters, more deportations.
The Democrats were so afraid of this issue.
They treated it like kryptonite.
And instead of pushing back and saying, this is what we do, this is what's been done, this is what hasn't changed since Donald Trump was president.
This is what hasn't changed since Barack Obama was president and deporting many more people than George W. Bush.
The number of people trying to come across the border increased.
The number of encounters with Border Patrol agents increased.
The difference was more people were trying to use international law regarding refugees.
They weren't sneaking across.
They were coming across with their documents in their hands and saying, here's my passport.
Here's my ID card.
Here's who I am.
I want to stay.
And that gave the United States a challenge that it is still coping with to this day.
And instead of being honest about it, I fault the Democrats for not making it a real fight.
Okay, Republicans, you want to fight about this issue?
Here's what we're up to.
And they would have been able to make Donald Trump sinking that deal in the Congress earlier in 2024 a more potent issue if they had argued more effectively against this idea that there was an open border.
There's never been, well, there has been an open border earlier in our history.
There hasn't been an open border in our recent history.
Not at all.
Echoing what Ray Suarez just said is a headline from December, just actually days ago.
Joe Biden administration deports more migrants than Donald Trump's and hits a 10-year high.
Mark in Ocean City, Maryland.
Mark, you're next.
Good morning, Mr. Suarez.
Yeah, I just want to take exception to the way you portray Donald Trump as if he's the only president in recent history to take such a strong position.
I mean, you can look at YouTube videos from Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and even Joe Biden, saying very much the same kind of thing.
Even Joe Biden was a proponent of having immigrants forcing them to learn English.
You know, so I think Donald Trump was the only one that was actually doing something rather than talking about it.
And perhaps that just his presidency just coincided with a lot of other things like the DEI initiatives, you know, just teaching people, whether it's in the workplace or teaching the kids in our schools that if you're white, you're the oppressor and things like that.
Just a lot of things coinciding at the same time, maybe, you know, tearing down of statues in different cities and things like that.
So I think there's just a whole lot of things happening all at once that we're just stirring the pot.
Okay, Mark.
I think that's a fair point.
I think some of the cultural anxiety about these questions has to do with a lot of things happening at once that sort of meshed in a way, as Mark hinted at.
Yes, every recent president has had something to say about illegal immigration.
And all during the time since the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, the number of people living long-term and undocumented in the United States has continued to rise.
You can't have a country where the commercial sector, where private business, has a 100-foot-high, blinking neon sign that says help wanted, and at the same time have a government that's saying, don't come here.
That's what we've had for the last 40 years.
We are reaping what we sowed.
People come here and make a living and tell their cousins and tell their brothers and tell the people that they grew up with back home that they're making a living.
And they continue to come here.
Now, political crisis is different.
I mean, you had a meltdown in Venezuela.
15% of the entire population of Cuba has left the country.
11 million people have left Venezuela.
A lot of them have gone to other neighboring countries.
And a lot of them have tried to come to the United States.
People showing up at the southern border, they're not just Latinos from south of the border.
They're also Chinese and Ukrainians and people from West Africa who've made their way through Panama, up through Central America and Mexico to the southern border.
The United States has experienced something that's part of a worldwide crisis.
And right now, I'd say politically, socially, culturally, we're not handling it all that well.
Immigrants, if we allow them to work, will succeed.
The rising tide will lift all boats, as it has throughout our history.
We can't deny it.
It has throughout our history.
And yes, there are these cultural anxieties.
It wasn't immigrants tearing down statues.
It wasn't immigrants marching with torches in Charlottesville, Virginia.
It's just that, as Mark suggests, a lot of these cross-currents in our culture are happening to coincide.
It wasn't immigrants closing down highways after the killing of George Floyd and carrying Black Lives Matter signs for that matter either.
But it just comes at a moment of high cultural conflict, and immigrants attract our attention in that moment, even as they're quietly picking crops and busing tables and plastering and painting walls.
Ray Suarez, the former PBS News, our chief national correspondent, is our guest this morning.
His book is We Are Home, Becoming American in the 21st Century, an Oral History.
Ray Suarez, did you look at laws, immigration laws, that have come about in our U.S. history and what impact they have had on where we are today?
Well, you know, a lot of today's Americans who dimly remember immigrant forebears and praise them for quote-unquote doing it the right way or doing it the legal way as a way to contrast them with today's immigrants don't really grasp the fact that for much of American history, until 1924, there were virtually no rules.
If you arrived, it was really easy to come into the United States.
So doing it the right way when you arrive on a ship from Ireland or from Hamburg wasn't really much of a big deal.
Today, immigration is far more complicated, cumbersome, expensive, time-consuming, and a lengthy process that sends immigrants into a Byzantine maze of laws and requirements and documents and filings, something that would have driven the immigrants from 1890 crazy.
It is a very different world.
As I mentioned earlier in our conversation, for much of the earlier part of American history, we systematically excluded people from most places in the world except for Europe, so we got European immigrants.
And because of that reason, as I also write about at length in the book, America's religious landscape is changing at the same time.
There were virtually no Hindus in the United States, very few, until 1965.
A very, very small number of Muslims in the United States until 1965.
And then we changed the laws.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 scraps the quota system that favored Europe and basically opens the door to a much broader set of countries.
And America starts to change from 1965 on with that law signed by President Johnson, championed in the Senate by Edward M. Kennedy, Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts.
And America, they both, at the time that that law passed, promised the members of Congress that the country really wasn't going to change that much if that law was passed.
I don't know whether they were just saying it to get other members on board of the Senate and House.
I don't know whether they really didn't think that the country was going to change that much, but who comes here and from where changed a lot after that law.
So I write a lot about the laws that were in force during the 19th century, the early part of the 20th century, and of course, the 1965 Act that really changes immigration to the United States and makes us the complicated and diverse place that we are today.
We'll go to Joseph in Baltimore.
Good morning to you.
Good morning.
We're listening, Joseph.
Question or comment?
I have a question and a comment.
All right, go ahead.
Can you give us Mrs. Swores a little bit of comment about the Hispanics or what you call back in the day before there was a United States and also the reason why they're really here?
And the third thing is the difference between borders and cross.
And one more thing.
The original slaves that came over here, chained, are different than those folks coming over here underneath the sea, over top of sea, and trucks in the back of anything, throwing children across the borders, and all kinds of things.
It is a big, big difference.
And then another thing, most of them, when they get here, are told that black people here in the United States do not want to work.
And they are told by employers, that's why they're here.
So for the last four years, the United States has fell asleep on that border.
Yep, he's up in there.
He's getting ready to leave this office.
All right.
All right, Mr. Suarez.
I think Joseph is getting at something that's very interesting and important to understand about America in the 21st century.
Black immigrants to the United States, whether they come from the Caribbean, from Africa, or from the African diaspora in other parts of the world, are given terrible social messages about being black in the United States when they arrive as immigrants.
And in that way, they share an experience with immigrants from other places in the world who all come here.
And it's been said ruefully by historians and by oral historians that one of the first things an immigrant learns is the N-word.
Earlier in our history, you know, on the social ladder, you could arrive from the poorest village in some place in the world.
And if you were white and you got here, you knew you were a couple of rungs up the ladder from day one from people who were born here and lived here their whole lives, that is, black Americans.
It's not a proud part of our history, but it is part of our history.
There are tensions between black immigrants and black Americans.
There are misunderstandings that go in both directions.
And I also want to speak briefly about something that Joseph mentioned earlier, which is the way that the United States border moved in the 19th century meant that a lot of Latinos in the United States are not immigrants.
They're the descendants of people who came here and were part of the Spanish Empire.
And then the expansive United States moved from sea to shining sea.
And under Manifest Destiny, they became part of the United States in Texas, in Arizona, in New Mexico, in California.
And they are part of a much older civilization on this continent and aren't, and have never been immigrants.
And it's useful to remember that and understand that.
But they have been much outnumbered by people who have come here from the rest of the hemisphere in more recent decades.
But Joseph makes a very good point, both about black Americans and their relationship with black immigrants and about Latinos being both new arrivals and among the oldest residents of this continent in this country at the same time.
Marty in Massachusetts, good morning to you.
Marty, go ahead.
Good morning, Ray.
First, I want to say Merry Christmas and look forward to a happy Three Kings Day and happy holidays.
Thank you.
The gifts are right behind me for tomorrow morning.
So wait.
Yes, sir.
And I also want to lift up Brian Lamb for, you know, and everyone at C-SPAN for democratizing the information that's out there.
And I want to lift up how great I think that the style of journalism that you do is and how some of these callers have some different opinions than other folks.
And I think it's really wonderful the way you handle and have a through line.
My question or comment is around the economic organizing that's happening right now within the immigrant and refugee community and the history that we have in America.
You know, right now there's a whole slew of low-wage worker organizing that's happening across the country, you know, from Waffle House to Amazon to the airports.
And much of that work is being done by folks that are in a precarious situation with their legal status.
And the consequence of mass deportations or the attempt of mass deportations, not only are we going to have this cultural anxiety, but it's you know, there's an economic interest there, and there's a really beautiful history of the Justice for January's campaign and 1199 in New York with Dr. King.
Right now in Minnesota, there's this alignment that's happening.
Harold Meyerson wrote an excellent article called Turning the Table to Minnesota.
And so, for your next project, I really think you should take a look at where this intersection of economics and immigration and what's coming next.
But, you know, again, you know, thanks for all you do, and Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
Thanks, Marty.
Thanks a lot, Marty.
Marty, thanks a lot.
As Marty mentions, as he implies, it's impossible to talk about the history of labor in this country without talking about immigration.
But an interesting thing is happening.
Shout out to the Service Employees International Union, SEIU, is organizing immigrant workers throughout the country, United Food and Commercial Workers, people who work in meat plants and work with chickens and pigs, people who work in the needle trades in Southern California.
There is a lot of organizing that needs to go on.
There's a lot of organizing that is going on.
And it connects in a lovely way to Union Square, a couple of miles from where I'm sitting right now, where you could see signs in Italian and Yiddish as union rallies went on in Lower Manhattan.
That is part of the story with low-wage workers.
Another one that's less talked about, I think, is home health care workers who are in the nascent months and years of organizing a national movement.
You know, 14% of the United States was born somewhere else in the world.
14% of the people who live in this country were born in another country.
But more than 50% of the people who provide home health care were born somewhere else in the world.
It is a fertile field for organization.
There's some of the lowest paid workers in the United States.
And interestingly, as the country ages, I mean, my beard is turning white.
As the country gets older, we're going to rely on those workers a great deal more to look after our mothers and fathers and grandparents, to allow them to age in place, to allow them to age with dignity.
And immigrant workers, people who might have otherwise never met your grandma, are going to spend their most intimate moments with her, bathing her and feeding her and making sure she takes her meds on time.
This is close-up work and work that creates loving, intimate bonds between people at the most helpless times in their lives.
And we should value this portion of immigrant labor a little bit more, and we should give them a little bit more training.
And we'd save a lot of medical expenses down the road because they'd be the early warning system for knowing something's going really wrong with your mother or father as they stay in their apartment instead of moving into institutional care.
So, Marty, thank you for the Christmas wishes.
And yes, immigrant labor is going to be a big part of the future of organized labor in the United States.
Ray Swore, let's go to Thomas, who's in California, an immigrant to this country.
Thomas, where are you from originally?
Good morning, and I appreciate you for taking my call.
I am from Liberia, West Africa.
Thomas, and how did you come to the United States and why?
Well, so we had a 40-year civil war in Liberia that really destroyed the country.
And other people, they were recruited citizens to become rebel fighters and all of that.
But for some of us, I have my relatives here.
And so because of the fear, we were all hiding.
And I was able to make my way here just to avoid becoming part of the destructive force in Liberia.
And Thomas, how do you view America today?
So when you look at the country, and it's so sad, I appreciate Mr. Suare for telling the story of immigrants in America.
And this topic has become a political issue.
Every four years, immigrants are beat down and treated like nothing, right?
So most, and I'm so sad that Americans don't read history.
They don't even know their own country history.
But when you look at the history of Liberia, it's the history of America.
We have the same flag, the same constitution, the same kind of government.
The first 10 presidents of Liberia were white Americans.
Americans, white, white people.
And so when we come here, we love this country.
I'm part of the military.
I'm part of the military president.
And because we love this country, and like I said, the history of Liberia is the history of America.
And I appreciate Mr. Ray, Mr. Suare, for telling the story of immigrants.
All right, Thomas, let's get a response from Ray Suarez.
Well, Liberia is one of the few African countries that has a long history of contact with the United States.
Unlike the European powers that divided up Africa in the late 19th century and basically just carved it up like they were carving up a birthday cake, the United States stood apart from that.
And Liberia was established as a home for freed slaves from the United States.
And there was transportation, shipment of freed people who wanted to go back to Africa and a movement in the United States to help Africans who wanted to get back to Africa to go to Liberia.
Liberia has had a troubled history in much of the time since then.
The displacement and the domination of the native-born people of that part of the West African coast is a very tangled and unhappy story.
But Liberians do have a connection with the United States that makes it one of the places that they have fled to when they had to leave the country during the terrible recent past.
I mean, between Sierra Leone and Liberia, Burkina Faso, some other countries, there have been some terrible wars in West Africa.
And this has become a haven, a place of safety for people like Thomas and many, many others.
So it's a great story.
And yeah, I mean, when Thomas says Americans should know their history better, I fully agree.
And certainly on this topic, it's one that is endlessly fascinating.
But, you know, because we didn't have a big network of colonies throughout the world, the way France and Britain did, the way Germany wanted to, and then had them all taken away after the First World War, we don't have those kind of connections.
As an earlier caller noted, our connections have been commercial.
When you talk about the history of United Fruit in Central America, you're talking about instead of going and taking over other countries the way the British did, we had our companies go places and become very important parts of the way those countries were run.
And it's a different kind of relationship, and it has made people both admire and love and fear the United States in other places in the world.
It's very, very complicated.
But I think on balance, the country is still pretty well thought of in the rest of the world in ways that I think are not totally appreciated by Americans here in the United States.
For our viewers who want to learn more from Ray Suarez, the book is We Are Home: Becoming American in the 21st Century in Oral History.
You can also listen to Ray Suarez on his podcast.
It's called On Shifting Ground with Ray Suarez.
Thank you, sir, for your time.
Happy holidays to you.
Thanks, Greta.
Thanks for having me.
And for everybody for whom tomorrow is Christmas, have a wonderful day.
This week, watch Washington Journal's special Holiday Authors Week series, featuring live segments each morning with a new writer.
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Tonight, author Malcolm Gladwell discusses his book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, about the downside of social epidemics, including the rise of opioid abuse and Medicare fraud.
A follow-up to his international bestseller, The Tipping Point, on how ideas and behavior spread in a society to create positive change.
These guys in the fraud task force took me to an office building in Miami, which had been divided up into hundreds of tiny closet-sized offices,