| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| California offered up his ideas for lowering health care costs. | ||
| This is what he had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think we've got to extend the subsidies. | |
| We're asking for a three-year extension. | ||
| Some folks are saying a one-year extension, maybe split the difference to two years. | ||
| And then we should get to work on addressing the cost of health care. | ||
| I also agree with my good friend, Senator Bill Cassidy, who has said, you know, let's not pay those subsidies to the insurance companies, because I agree the insurance companies are just raising rates. | ||
| Can we come up with a system that perhaps gives the buying power to the consumer? | ||
| Perhaps it's health savings accounts paired with a deductible, something like that. | ||
| But again, the details are going to have to be worked out, and we won't get that done before the end of the year. | ||
| Okay, so you're saying extend the subsidies in. | ||
| Maybe we can talk about some of those other major changes to the system. | ||
| But it sounds to me like it sounds like you're open to the idea of the cash flowing directly to the consumer in one of these accounts or some other way that does bypass the insurance companies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, I'm one of the few Democrats that support health savings accounts, which allow you when you're young and healthy and don't really use health care to save money. | |
| So when you're a little bit older or as a senior, you can actually use those dollars that you saved to cover some of those health care costs. | ||
| We would have to change the laws a little bit, allow you to use some of those premium or those savings to buy your premiums, create more basic health care coverage so every American can have basic coverage. | ||
| Again, what I'm hearing out of my Republican colleagues is they may be open to doing something different that brings the cost of health care down. | ||
| That was Democrat Ami Berra of California. | ||
| Democrat from the Republican side of the aisle, Rick Scott, the sender from Florida, was also on Fox News Sunday. | ||
| This is what he had to say about lowering the cost of health care. | ||
| So it's really important to me that we get people health care. | ||
| So how do you do it? | ||
| You give money directly to the consumer. | ||
| They buy the insurance plan they want. | ||
| You protect pre-existing condition. | ||
| And you give them information. | ||
| They should know what everything costs. | ||
| They should know what the outcomes are. | ||
| They should know a patient satisfaction. | ||
| They should be a buyer just like any other. | ||
| I built on top of a hospital company. | ||
| I built an urgent care company. | ||
| We had all of our prices up on the menu board so everybody could walk in and do it the way they wanted. | ||
| So if you give it to the individual in HSA, they could buy, they could pay for a premium, they could pay for their co-payment. | ||
| They also could pay directly to go get a physical or go see a physician and buy it cheaper. | ||
| So look, we have to fix this. | ||
| Obamacare is a disaster. | ||
| Obama said you keep your doctor, lie. | ||
| Keep your plan, lie. | ||
| You'd save $2,500 a family, lie. | ||
| So we've got to drive the cost of health care down. | ||
| The only way it's going to happen is let the consumer act like a consumer like we do in every other industry in this country. | ||
| Two views there from Fox News Sunday on reducing the cost of health care. | ||
| We're talking about affordability in general and asking you this morning on the Washington Journal: what can the government do to lower costs for you? | ||
| Phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents having this conversation in this first hour today until 8 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| And this is Mary out of Massachusetts Independent. | ||
| Mary, what do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| And I just wanted to read you my grocery bill from November 15th. | ||
| I got rice, romaine hearts, spring mix, cage-free eggs, swallowed tortillas, plain yogurt, butter, four sticks of butter. | ||
| I got two things of spaghetti, sharp suedder cheese, pasta, three types of cheeses, Swiss cheese block whole, a whole organic chicken, whole milk, a huge pack of chicken wings and gala apples, and it was $64.58. | ||
| I noticed that all the prices went down when I was at the grocery store for almost everything I normally get. | ||
| And my gas is below $3 a gallon. | ||
| So I do think it's going in the right direction. | ||
| My eggs were under $2. | ||
| And Mary, when you say it's down, are you saying down from October, from six months ago? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think from just, yeah, like six months. | |
| I mean, I'm not paying that close attention to it, but, you know, I'm not a huge shopper. | ||
| And this is at Aldi's. | ||
| So these are pretty cheap prices, relatively speaking, like from the last year. | ||
| Like, certainly eggs have gone down, butter has gone down, milk has gone down. | ||
| Some of the staples that I usually buy have gone down. | ||
| I don't buy coffee anymore. | ||
| I haven't bought coffee for years because it is coming imported. | ||
| I've just switched to tea or I do some other beverage. | ||
| And I don't buy as many bananas as I used to. | ||
| So I'm not that concerned about buying things that are imported. | ||
| I really am trying to stay with locally produced stuff. | ||
| So Mary, why do you think it is at the top of this program? | ||
| We noted large majorities of Americans worried about rising costs. | ||
| So why do you think it is that 64% of Americans said Donald Trump's policies were making the prices they paid for food and groceries increase, according to a CBS News YouGov poll that was from October? | ||
| Why do you think it is people are saying that? | ||
| Do you think it's partially, as President Trump said in his True Social post last night, a messaging issue that Republicans aren't talking about this enough or talking about what the president is doing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think maybe they're not talking about it enough, and I think it takes a little while for all the price changes to catch up. | |
| I think the more there's competition, the more the prices will go down. | ||
| So maybe Whole Foods will start dropping their prices. | ||
| Maybe some other large and more ritzy chains will start dropping their prices when they just realize that we can't do it all. | ||
| We can't afford high medical costs, high insurance for our homes, high housing, and high groceries. | ||
| I just think that there's some pressure that's going to be happening with a lot of businesses, especially when it comes to the staples. | ||
| I think it's just going to start to lower. | ||
| What do you think of these tariffs on Friday? | ||
| The president signs an executive order rolling back some tariffs on grocery items. | ||
| That being viewed as an acknowledgment that tariffs raise the cost for people. | ||
| If you can roll them back to lower prices. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think they definitely will raise the cost for imported goods. | |
| I mean, there's no two ways about that. | ||
| But I think Americans could also start to shift their purchasing so that maybe some natural decreases will happen without tariffs. | ||
| I mean, if you stop the demand, then the supply will, you know, maybe they'll start lowering prices overseas. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I just I've always just kind of bought things that are more local anyway because I think it's better for my local economy. | ||
| So I tend not to buy overseas products that much. | ||
| So yeah, if you buy overseas, you're going to pay more. | ||
| That's just the way it is. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think it's good to lower maybe some of the tariffs for food, but I'm not sure it's needed. | ||
| I think we should bring manufacturing back to the United States as much as possible. | ||
| Mary, thanks for the call from Massachusetts. | ||
| Thanks for sharing your grocery bill. | ||
| This is David in Yorktown, Texas, Line for Democrats. | ||
| David, thanks for waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| First off, I think that we need to get health care to be free for everyone. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| I can hear you, David. | ||
| You want free health care in this country? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| How do we pay for that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It might be for taxes, but all the other countries do it. | |
| Why can't we? | ||
| We're the richest country in the world. | ||
| So everyone says. | ||
| Are you worried that doing that would drastically raise tax bills in this country? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it would raise them, but we don't. | |
| With all the rich boys getting all the tax breaks, the billionaires, well, it would certainly help if we get more tax on them. | ||
| David, thanks for the call from Texas this morning. | ||
| JR is in the Old Dominion, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I think the way to improve the economy is your gas prices, your groceries prices, and health care. | ||
| Healthcare is just like for people on a fixed income. | ||
| They're getting a 2.7% raise on cost of living this year. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, by the time the insurance company gets through, they got a raise on paper, but not in their pocket. | ||
| My insurance cost is $185 a month. | ||
| By the time they get through this time, my insurance is going to be $200 a month. | ||
| It's too much of this monopoly going on inside the government so they can stay rich. | ||
| I ain't never seen, you know, back in the day. | ||
| 8% in November 21 and 50% in February of 2022. | ||
| Again, the question, how much do you blame the president for the current inflation rate? | ||
| This is Karen in Sussex, New Jersey. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I agree with the person who said the three cornerstones of the economy are gas, groceries, and health care. | ||
| The question I have is: why isn't more focus being put on what's going on in the healthcare industry? | ||
| How much money are they making? | ||
| How much profit is there in their margins? | ||
| How much are they paying their executives in bonuses? | ||
| And explaining some of those things. | ||
| So we have the full picture of what's going on. | ||
| Neither Democrat nor Republican are as well as the media. | ||
| Karen, on gas, groceries, and health care being sort of the three legs of this affordability stool, there was a caller earlier that wanted a 50-year mortgage. | ||
| That housing cost essentially was his biggest issue. | ||
| How are housing costs in Sussex, New Jersey? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In general, very, very high. | |
| Luckily, we got into an ideal situation back six years ago where we bought something under market value because somebody, it wasn't a very big home. | ||
| It wasn't very desirable area as far as being close to stores and work and things like that. | ||
| So we're okay there, but we are not, we are an exception to the rule. | ||
| Is it a big often tributed to the cost of housing is just the availability of homes, that the limited number of homes in the market makes everything cost more to try to get into a home or to fight somebody else and a bidding more for a house? | ||
| In terms of how many homes are available in Sussex, New Jersey, is that a problem that you see there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the price is the big problem. | |
| Like, for example, the house that we bought for only $130,000 five years ago could be worth up to $300,000 now. | ||
| So it's the pricing that's gotten out of control. | ||
| Marketability, there's not a lot on the market. | ||
| I don't think buyers are there for the pricing that exists now. | ||
| Karen, thanks for the call from Sussex. | ||
| We go to Bill in Kannapolis, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Bill, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| What can the government do to lower prices for you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Healthcare. | ||
| I don't understand why we have to have insurance for something that's going to happen. | ||
| Everybody's going to get sick. | ||
| Everybody needs health care. | ||
| And why do we have an insurance company involved? | ||
| Because all they're doing is pushing up the price of insurance. | ||
| Why can't we have single payer without the insurance company at all? | ||
| Because I see the insurance company as being a middleman. | ||
| All they're doing is taking money. | ||
| Why doesn't the government tax us as citizens, pay for the health care, and let us go on for our lives? | ||
| Too many people are getting rich, living optimum lives on health care. | ||
| There's no need for insurance in health care. | ||
| Bill, on where you are on this topic, calling in on the Republican line, some people might think that's an unusual position advocating for single payer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am a lifelong Republican. | |
| I hear all these people who say they're Republicans. | ||
| They are not. | ||
| A lot of them in the South where I am are just Dixiecrats, people who have used to be Democrats, their families did, and they changed to Republicans. | ||
| And that was basically because of racial lines. | ||
| Bill, do you think there are about affordability? | ||
| Do you think there are other parts of the economy where if the government took it over, that it could do a better job than allowing the free market to run that part of the economy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The government has already taken over health care when you look at Medicare, Medicaid. | |
| Why do we have somebody who's artificially pushing the price up so that their friends can get rich? | ||
| There's too much of a third party in health care at all. | ||
| Doctors don't make decisions for you anymore. | ||
| Now it's just basically the insurance company telling the doctor what they can and can't do. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense at all. | ||
| It lessens the quality of health care. | ||
| And Bill, is there any other part of the economy that you think that this would apply to? | ||
| Or is healthcare just kind of a unicorn here where single payer would fix this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, healthcare is a huge driver. | |
| Look at how much the subsidy is going to go up. | ||
| They're talking 300% on subsidies. | ||
| I shop all the time. | ||
| I went into the grocery store a couple weeks ago at Sam's. | ||
| I love laptops. | ||
| The price of a pack of lamb chops went from $9 to $21. | ||
| That's just a matter of gouging because of the tariffs that are needless to begin with. | ||
| What I see now is the rich getting richer, and they're just a giant sucking sound, sucking the money out of the poor people, the people who work for a living. | ||
| It's not really about the working man. | ||
| It's about the guy who can sit behind a computer and manipulate stocks and get paid for day trading. | ||
| No product in day trading. | ||
| They don't produce anything, but yet they make millions and billions of dollars. | ||
| That's Bill in North Carolina. | ||
| You talked about food prices there at the end. | ||
| President Trump also speaking about food prices. | ||
| This was Sunday evening last night. | ||
| The president talking to reporters before departing from Florida to come back to Washington, D.C. | ||
| This is the president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, everybody, we had a great weekend. | |
| From an economic standpoint, our prices are coming down very substantially on groceries and things. | ||
| They're already at a much lower level than they were with the last administration. | ||
| And we worked on it this weekend, and you're going to see some of the items that were a little bit higher. | ||
| They were lower than the last administration, but a little bit higher. | ||
| We're going to have some little price reductions, and in some cases, some pretty good ones. | ||
| They use the affordability word. | ||
| The affordability is much, much better with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And again, I go to Walmart and other companies. | |
| And in every case, it's about 25% that a meal, a Thanksgiving meal and surroundings are 25% lower than it was under the Biden administration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a big fact. | |
| And that comes from Walmart and others that do that. | ||
| That was the president last night. | ||
| And then, again, this is one of the headlines in today's newspapers. | ||
| It's the Wall Street Journal today. | ||
| President grasps for ways to lower prices. | ||
| Trump looks to trim costs on drugs, food, housing amid signs of voter frustration. | ||
| We're talking about that this morning on the Washington Journal, asking, what can the government do to lower costs for you? | ||
| What can the president, what can Congress do? | ||
| It's 202, 748, 8,000 for Democrats. | ||
| Republicans, 202, 748, 8001. | ||
| Independents, 202748, 8,002. | ||
| About 20 minutes left in this conversation. | ||
| This is Peter out of Conway, New Hampshire, Independent. | ||
| Peter, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I agree with President Trump that the Republicans are not explaining the inflation circumstances. | |
| According to Inflation Calculator, Democrats under the Biden administration accumulated an inflation rate of 25% and in some sectors to 40%. | ||
| Currently, the inflation rate under Trump is between 2.8 and 2.4 month to month. | ||
| That's one-tenth the rate of the Biden administration. | ||
| So the prices certainly are real. | ||
| The pain is real, but the blame goes to the Democrats. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Hey, Peter, before you go, when it comes to blame for the economy, if we're still in a Biden economy or having the after effects of the Biden economy and you can't blame Donald Trump for that, when does it become Donald Trump's economy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, certainly not in the first year. | |
| Now, I'm going to say about myself. | ||
| I'm disabled. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I came from Las Vegas. | ||
| I moved to Illinois, and I'm out here in Florida now. | ||
| And all those three states that I went through, I only get a certain amount of money for Social Security every month. | ||
| There is no way that I was able to afford until now because I'm not in a hotel until my money run out. | ||
| I'm in my vehicle. | ||
| So what I'm saying is there should be some kind of fixed income for disability people because there's a lot of homeless people out there that can't afford rent nowhere that should be able to have a place to stay if they're, you know, if you're getting like, say, $1,000 a month, there's nowhere anywhere where you can live to pay $1,000 a month of rent. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| My next question is healthcare. | ||
| I've been going to different doctors and I've had different doctors not want to see me because they wanted me to have a different health care plan. | ||
| So I don't know if there's a money situation going on there to where there's like, like I had to leave one doctor because he wanted to give me injections and I don't want to get an injection. | ||
| So he was like, well, I'm not going to see you anymore because I didn't want the injections. | ||
| And my last question is. | ||
| What kind of injections out of curiosity? | ||
| Are you talking about vaccinations? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whatever injections he wanted me to have, I didn't want them. | |
| What I'm saying is, to me, he was saying it was mandatory for me to keep continuing to see him, but he had to give me these injections. | ||
| And I was like, I don't take injections. | ||
| Okay, that's Julian in Florida. | ||
| This is Robbie, also in Florida. | ||
| It's Bronson, Florida, Democrat. | ||
| Robbie, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just wanted to address the affordability issue, which is such a good question. | ||
| And you're getting so many good ideas from people in every party or no party. | ||
| Lots of good ideas. | ||
| They all seem to boil back down to corporations being considered by the Supreme Court to be a person, and they're not. | ||
| The corporations are monopolies that are making it to where private health insurance is unaffordable. | ||
| We've lost our rural hospital here. | ||
| Our food is still too high. | ||
| The Chuck Roast that people are talking about costs $25 to $30. | ||
| We were having solar panels put into our electric system, and suddenly two months ago, our electric bills went up by 25%. | ||
| I've been living in my home for 47 years, so I know what it's doing. | ||
| And Duke Energy had to do away with the solar project that they had halfway built because they took away the money from it from the administration that's in there now. | ||
| Some people claim that the Biden administration didn't do any good things for affordability. | ||
| However, they put so much money in our county down here, Levy County, to build a new airport, help commerce. | ||
| They did a lot of things to help our roads out here because we're a rural county. | ||
| But I'm elderly and can't work, can't get more money. | ||
| And the immigration chaos, in fact, the chaos across the board in general is causing so many problems for our agriculture industry, from tariffs to the workers in the field, all of it causing lots and lots of problems. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The AI is driving up the cost of electricity because these centers where they do the AI take so much electricity and we're all having to pay for that. | |
| I say that it's the corporations driving this country. | ||
| And so many good ideas that have come out from all these questions that you've put out there from so many different parts of our political landscape. | ||
| I think it's really important that you keep asking these questions because monopolies don't work for the majority of the people. | ||
| They're just there as profit centers. | ||
| And as long as that's the case, and we've got administration people that lie and tell you that the price is going down when the only price that's got down is gas, everything else, utilities, housing, food, everything else is going up. | ||
| Robbie, on the utility issue, I would just note, and thanks for the kind words about the question that we came up with today. | ||
| But you brought up electricity prices and the surging demand from data centers. | ||
| That's literally one of the issues that the Wall Street Journal brings up in its story today about that sector of the economy, the utility sector, the sector, the cost of electricity, as one of the main drivers of that. | ||
| You may want to read this story. | ||
| It's in today's Wall Street Journal. | ||
| It's by Alex Leary, Tarini Hardy, and Justin Layhart. | ||
| But thanks for the call. | ||
| I've got two minutes left. | ||
| Let me get to a couple more callers. | ||
| This is William out in Tucson, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning, John. | |
| Hey, listen, I think the lower cost really for me, my wife and I, we didn't really make plans. |