| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Thursday, November 20th. | ||
| According to a new Gallup poll, nearly half of American adults are worried they won't be able to afford health care in the coming year. | ||
| An overwhelming majority, 90%, believe we spend too much on health care for the quality we get. | ||
| This morning, we want to hear from you. | ||
| Are you worried you won't be able to afford health care in 2026? | ||
| What has your experience been with quality and accessibility? | ||
| Have you ever had to forego recommended treatments or medications because you couldn't afford it? | ||
| Here's how to share your thoughts. | ||
| Democrats, 202748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also text us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name in your city-state. | ||
| And we're on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll start with that poll that I mentioned. | ||
| This is at the Gallup website. | ||
| It's headlined, How Do Americans Experience Healthcare in Their State? | ||
| And it starts this way. | ||
| Nearly half of U.S. adults, 47%, are worried they won't be able to afford necessary healthcare in the coming year. | ||
| It's the highest level of concern recorded since West Health and Gallup began tracking the measure in 2021. | ||
| One in five Americans, also a record high, report that they or someone in their household couldn't pay for prescription medications in the past three months. | ||
| These are merely two of countless healthcare hurdles Americans face. | ||
| This study also looked at ranking, so healthcare experience of the states. | ||
| So if you'd like to see where your state is, whether it's top 10 or bottom 10 in healthcare experience, you can take a look or give us a call. | ||
| And yesterday, senators in the finance committee heard from an ACA enrollee who is seeing a rise in healthcare costs from the expiration of the enhanced subsidies. | ||
| Here's an exchange with Senator Maggie Hassen of New Hampshire. | ||
| I want to start with a question to you, Mr. Armitage. | ||
| We are more than two weeks into open enrollment, and granted staters are logging onto healthcare.gov and they are seeing that their out-of-pocket costs for premiums have increased by thousands of dollars. | ||
| My Republican colleagues for weeks insisted that they wouldn't work on addressing the issue while the government was shut down. | ||
| So now the government is reopened. | ||
| It's critical that we come to the table and find a bipartisan path to extend the enhanced tax credits because the stakes couldn't be higher. | ||
| My office recently heard from Laura in Dover, New Hampshire, who is self-employed and whose monthly premium is surging from $140 per month to nearly $500 per month. | ||
| Laura told me that she will not be able to afford health insurance next year. | ||
| So, Mr. Armitage, what are the difficult decisions that your family is considering due to healthcare.gov enhanced premium tax credits being taken away? | ||
| Well, my wife and I are on fixed income. | ||
| So we've worked out, continuing to work out budgets in order to live a decent life, have a little extra money to pay for the things that come up. | ||
| And so overnight, a 500% increase in our insurance payment is a major blow to daily life expenditures, everything. | ||
| I mean, if you can imagine having a car payment that goes up 500% the next day, would you want to keep that car? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Or you'd be scared to use it, probably. | ||
| Well, I think that that is well said, especially at a time when costs are rising for necessities for all Americans all across the country. | ||
| So I appreciate your testimony today and shining a light on what kind of choices people are making. | ||
| And we're asking you this morning: are you concerned with rising health care costs? | ||
| Do you worry that you won't be able to afford health care in 2026? | ||
| We'll start with Ron calling us from San Clemente, California. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, it's to answer that question is a little more complex than just saying yes or no. | ||
| The reason is, I'm a Republican. | ||
| I'm a Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger Republican. | ||
| So back in February, everybody laughed us off because we were only about 13% of the population that were Republicans who believed in morals and ethics. | ||
| And so anyway, it took nine months, and sure enough, all through that period of time, the cost of everything rose dramatically because of the tariffs, because of the works of this administration, because of the constant effort to demand higher costs for everything. | ||
| So as a result of that fact, of course, health care is going to cost more, but everything else does too. | ||
| Try to repair your vehicle. | ||
| The cost of everything that you buy for that vehicle has doubled. | ||
| We'll try to buy food. | ||
| The cost of your food, if you like, quality food. | ||
| Ron, let's stick to health care costs. | ||
| I mean, you think that the actions of the administration are causing health care costs to rise? | ||
| Explain that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| It's pretty simple. | ||
| When everything goes up, all right. | ||
| Obviously, then every area of the whole economy is going to go up. | ||
| So it's not just, that's why I brought that up, because of the fact that what we're talking about here is not just health care, which is dramatic. | ||
| I mean, look at prescription drug costs. | ||
| Look at the cost of, I mean, these prescription drugs that used to cost half of what they do under the so-called Biden administration are now double. | ||
| And so, you know, I mean, it's the irrelevant and immoral use of the tariff laws and because of the laws that constantly are being put forward by this administration. | ||
| That's why they're going to get wiped out in the midterms. | ||
| And the good news is this. | ||
| That 13% that I belong to is now adding another 30%. | ||
| Wait, Ron, where are you doing Republicans? | ||
| I'm curious about this 13%. | ||
| Where'd you get that number? | ||
|
unidentified
|
13% is like a baseline for serious Republicans that have believed in a moral and ethical. | |
| Right, but how are you measuring that? | ||
| You measure that because of the fact that if you go to any, I don't know, just look at when you go to open forums for congresspeople, and you see how many people are at those forums constantly picking on the Republicans for what their actions have been. | ||
| We'll see that that's 13 percent or more than the base. | ||
| So, Ron, Ron, I got to I got to move on. | ||
| Martha in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Martha. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I am concerned about the health care in the country because recently there have been so many doctors who have retired in my area. | ||
| My primary care physician being one of the doctors that retired, it is very difficult to find a doctor who's taking new patients. | ||
| So more and more you're being seen by certified physician assistants. | ||
| And health care premiums rising, well, that's not a surprise. | ||
| Everybody wants 21st century medical care. | ||
| Spare no expense. | ||
| Do everything you can. | ||
| They want 21st century medical care, but you're not going to get that at 1990 prices. | ||
| So Martha, I want to go back to what you said about doctors retiring. | ||
| Have you personally found it hard to get an appointment? | ||
| Have you found that you've had to wait longer to get an appointment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you still okay with that? | |
| Well, what I found difficult was to find a doctor that would take a new patient. | ||
| And have you found a new primary care doctor now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yes. | |
| But you know what? | ||
| It literally took me months. | ||
| It took me months because I called my medical insurance company and I said, do you by any chance have a list of doctors in my area that are taking new patients? | ||
| So she gave me a few names and I called them and find out that no, they weren't taking new patients. | ||
| So it actually took me a few months to find a doctor that was taking new patients. | ||
| But as far as getting an appointment, once I found the doctor, I got in fairly quickly. | ||
| But getting back to the Affordable Care Act and stuff, let's not forget, 10 years ago, the medical community declared drug addiction as a disease. | ||
| So over the last 10 years, medical insurance companies, they now have to pay for rehab, whether the addict is rehab one time or three times or whatever it takes. | ||
| And rehab is extremely expensive. | ||
| So that could account for some of the reason why medical insurance premiums have gone up. | ||
| Because, you know, what do we have like several million addicts in this country going through rehab and medical insurance companies now having to pay for rehab? | ||
| All right, Martha, and let's check in on Facebook. | ||
| This is what Terry says. | ||
| Insurance is the biggest scam in America. | ||
| We need doctors to be able to do their job without insurance companies dictating health care. | ||
| Whatever happened to Trump's concept of a plan and the Republicans' notebooks of ideas? | ||
| They've had over 10 years to come up with something. | ||
| Maybe they could improve the ACA instead of gutting it. | ||
| But better yet, let's go with universal health care. | ||
| Here's what our Gloria says on Facebook. | ||
| The question should be, why isn't health care in America affordable? | ||
| Most Americans are ignorant regarding access to affordable health care. | ||
| Profit takes precedence over people. | ||
| And Bill Floyd, responding to the question, are you concerned, says, of course, we need a single-payer plan like the rest of the industrial world has. | ||
| And Tammy says, yes, mine more than doubled. | ||
| Anthony, a Massachusetts Republican. | ||
| Hi, Anthony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I have an idea of why we pay so much for health care. | ||
| And what I believe is that there is an incentive for various providers like doctors or medical device providers, anything, | ||
| to charge a lot to people who are either out of network, don't have ACA or business paying their premiums, and anybody else who's not in ACA or getting it from business. | ||
| Because if they do charge that and somebody pays a lot and just gets bad value, they can use that as a basis for their starting negotiation. | ||
| Like say if they're negotiating to get a high payment for out-of-network coverage, they can use that overcharge as claiming it's a going rate. | ||
| And that is a big advantage in negotiations with insurance companies and other buyers of healthcare, like businesses. | ||
| And so Mary in Fort Washington, Maryland, Democrat, you're on the air, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| Good morning, Mimi and America. | ||
| I'm not concerned for myself because I'm on Medicare now. | ||
| And I have to switch from Kaiser because I'm tired of the selection of doctors to Blue Cross Blue Shield where I can pick my own. | ||
| I'm looking forward to that again. | ||
| And as far as the rising costs, we wouldn't be concerned about that if we had Medicare for all, like all other industrialized, civilized countries. | ||
| See, we live in a country where the corporations tell us what to do, and they own the insurance companies, and they also own Congress. | ||
| So, if we get a Congress in office that actually has a brain and a heart and compassion and a conscience, we will have Medicare for all. | ||
| And that's what we need. | ||
| I said, I listened to the people on Facebook. | ||
| I agree with all of them. | ||
| We need a civilized health care system. | ||
| We don't need insurance. | ||
| And when we can get rid of the insurance companies and get a Medicare public option for all, we will all be healthier. | ||
| And it all comes down to a Congress, which we don't have right now. | ||
| We don't have a legitimate president. | ||
| We don't have a legitimate anything. | ||
| And when we get this man out of office, maybe we can get Medicare for all and they can stop gutting the ACA, which they like to call Obamacare, so they can hate it. | ||
| That is what we need, and that is my concern. | ||
| But I'm looking forward to having Blue Cross Blue Shield where I can pick my doctors, and I can pick anything in it. | ||
| No more HMOs, organized health. | ||
| No, that doesn't work anymore. | ||
| It works for the VA, yes, but it's not working for the American people right now. | ||
| So that is what I say. | ||
| All right, Mary and Nelson is also in Maryland. | ||
| Independent Lion, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Good morning, America. | ||
| Just very concerned, very concerned about the healthcare situation. | ||
| I tried filling my mom's prescription, and she goes to Kaiser. | ||
| So it went from $300 to $600, and she's on a fixed income. | ||
| So I'm concerned, like folks who don't, they don't even make that much money, and they're being charged exponentially to fill their prescriptions. | ||
| And this is just all about greed. | ||
| I was reading the other day about a doctor in Potomac, Maryland. | ||
| He lives on a 30,000 square feet house, and when he passed it, they didn't have any way to sell the property. | ||
| They just, it's just total greed when you have people who are poor, they can't afford medications. | ||
| I just think this administration should think about people and stop thinking about corporations, like the insurance companies and all these things. | ||
| So that's my concern. | ||
| Thank you, Mimi. | ||
| And here's what Politico says about Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician. | ||
| It says, Cassidy pushes his Obamacare plan. | ||
| Democrats aren't biting. | ||
| It says with Obamacare subsidies set to expire at year end and insurance bills skyrocketing. | ||
| Senators are at loggerheads. | ||
| Let's take a look at a portion of Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Brian Blaze of Paragon Health talking about this idea of sending federal dollars directly to consumers. | ||
| Obamacare failed to give access to all Americans to health care, and Obamacare failed to control health care costs. | ||
| And the kind of comments that have been made back and forth make that clear. | ||
| The question is, how do we address this? | ||
| And this is personal to me. | ||
| I'm a physician who worked for 20 years in a hospital for the poorly insured and the uninsured. | ||
| Sir, your story about your issues or the patients that I used to see. | ||
| And one thing you've mentioned, if not emphasized, but I happen to know that deductibles, which are too high, become a barrier to accessing the insurance. | ||
| You are someone, we need to do something for your insurance policy, not just the deductible, but also the cost of the premium itself. | ||
| I think that's true. | ||
| Now, we also have to control health care costs. | ||
| So, Dr. Blaze, I got limited time. | ||
| Be tight, man. | ||
| Be tight. | ||
| So tell us about the ability of a health savings account, just statistically, not your opinion, but what statistics show that once you give the mama the power of the purse, the ability to shop with a health savings account, which she's awarded if she chooses a lower cost option, what impact does that have on health care cost? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, you can look at a 15 to 25% reduction, Senator. | ||
| A 15 to 25% reduction in what? | ||
| In overall health care spending for that family. | ||
| And does it negatively affect outcomes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Which is to say, do they end up as healthy as they would have? | |
| They end up just as healthy as before. | ||
| It turns out that when they have that control, Americans can be wise consumers and make good decisions about what they're doing. | ||
| Americans can be wise consumers. | ||
| You're telling me that we can actually trust that mother, that wife, and women make almost all the health care decisions. | ||
| We can trust her to make a wise decision. | ||
| We don't have to be paternalistic. | ||
| I agree with that, Senator. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And by the way, more importantly, that has been pointed out by study after study. | ||
| And that hearing is on our website, c-span.org, if you'd like to see the whole thing. | ||
| Here's Ralph, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Ralph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I have to mention about, I'm worried about the cuts to Medicaid. | |
| And my city has a federally qualified health clinic, which I go to, which is extremely busy. | ||
| It serves people on Medicaid. | ||
| It serves people that are uninsured, that have to pay for cash. | ||
| And I am worried that my healthcare clinic is going to get hit with a lot of reductions, you know, with the reductions in Medicaid reimbursement. | ||
| And I'm also, you know, concerned about the fact that they're cutting Medicaid reimbursements for the rural hospitals. | ||
| So I think the federally qualified health care clinics are in trouble and the rural hospitals are in trouble. | ||
| They're already in a bad situation. | ||
| And then further, if I want to worry more, I mean, the idea of the budget, like let's say Medicare is what he said. | ||
| Medicare is not taking in as much money as it has in the past. | ||
| And expenses are rising. | ||
| You know, outflows are rising for Medicare. | ||
| And I don't know when Medicare becomes insolvent at some point. | ||
| And then you've got the deficit, which continues to grow, the national debt, which continues to grow, which I don't think Trump cares about. | ||
| I don't think he doesn't even mention the national debt. | ||
| He doesn't mention about the deficit. | ||
| He doesn't mention about Social Security and Medicare being solvent. | ||
| I mean, so we're in a precarious situation, I would say. | ||
| All right, Ralph, let's talk to Robert next. | ||
| Greenville, Texas, Independent Lion. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Can you hear me okay? | ||
| Yes, we can, Robert. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would just say this. | |
| We've got all these different plans out there, all these different insurance companies, all these different silver, gold, platinum, whatever for the ACA, Medicare, Part A, Part B, all this nonsense. | ||
| And we've got these insurance companies racking in billions of dollars, spending half the money that they make probably on advertising, bombarding us with ads to take this, take that. | ||
| I think it's about high time you just ask a basic question. | ||
| Why don't we just make health care in America a universal right? | ||
| Just like being able to get a 12th grade education or, you know, turning 18 and having the right to vote. | ||
| Why has this got to be so complicated and so many players involved? | ||
| We just unify the damn thing. | ||
| I think we could probably get through this for a whole lot less cost. | ||
| Robert, what kind of health insurance do you have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've got Blue Cross and Blue Shield. | |
| And you have that through an employer or through Medicare transfer? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My wife's job. | |
| And obviously, I've got Medicare or Medicaid. | ||
| I've got to be honest with you, I don't even take aspirin. | ||
| I just get through whatever's going on. | ||
| And I think most Americans do. | ||
| Most Americans do not want to be in a hospital. | ||
| And they take care of themselves in their own ways. | ||
| So the cost of whatever universal health care, I don't believe, would rise by just, you know, letting everybody have the same care. | ||
| You know, my envision in America would be to have a family doctor come to the house and say, oh, you ate too much candy. | ||
| You know, you're all right, Robert. | ||
| Here's Richard, South Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Go ahead, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, if you think the affordable health care is unaffordable now, try universal health care. | |
| That's what everybody's headed toward. | ||
| They want a single payer. | ||
| But just think about the problem. | ||
| The hospitals control health care now. | ||
| They're buying up all the doctors' practices. | ||
| And so that's really just concentrating the problem into non-competition. | ||
| And therefore, it's gotten to be a real issue in various areas of the country. | ||
| That's all I've got to say to you. | ||
| Richard, what do you think is the best solution then? | ||
| Since you don't like the idea of single payer, you say it's too expensive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why? | |
| I think you have to have the insurance companies. | ||
| I think you have to have competition in that particular area. | ||
| And why has the affordable health care become unaffordable? | ||
| You don't think there's enough competition for health insurance companies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| I think there should be more competition. | ||
| Competition will ultimately bring down prices. | ||
| But the Affordable Care Act has just funded health care, and the prices have tripled since 2009. | ||
| So more money doesn't solve the problem. | ||
| Here's Kathy, Democrat in Patoski, Michigan. | ||
| Good morning, Kathy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Good morning, C-SPAN. | ||
| I come from a family of medical workers going back to my great-grandmother. | ||
| I'm here in Potoski. | ||
| She was a private duty nurse in her later years in Bayview. | ||
| She was a midwife nurse. | ||
| Years ago, when I first began working at a hospital, I think it was 1990, I could insure the entire family and myself, there were four of us, for it was either $20 or $40 a month. | ||
| I had my first two children home. | ||
| I paid, my husband and I paid cash. | ||
| We paid the doctor. | ||
| We paid the midwives. | ||
| The midwives were $500. | ||
| It was about $500 for the physician visits. | ||
| What year was this, Kathy? | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| 1987, 1989, when I had my first and second child, my third child was born in a hospital. | ||
| I didn't pay anything. | ||
| I think I paid some co-pays for the doctor's visits to the primary care physician. | ||
| I know that people that work in medicine work very hard. | ||
| You work weekends, you work holidays, you work midnights. | ||
| It's grueling work. | ||
| There's work that's necessary. | ||
| I'm all for national health care. | ||
| I would do it through taxation. | ||
| I would make it affordable. | ||
| The more you make, the more you pay for your health benefits. | ||
| My health benefits, my son is no longer going to be on my plan starting January because he will be, he's 26 now. | ||
| We're just signing up. | ||
| That will be $100 a month for myself, which is affordable. | ||
| So, Kathy, I want to ask you about giving birth. | ||
| And it's extremely expensive now for to have children. | ||
| I mean, just going and giving birth in a hospital, there's a lot of expenses now. | ||
| Why do you think that is? | ||
| I mean, childbirth hasn't changed that much. | ||
| I mean, there's the issue of insurance, right? | ||
| There's a lot of liability insurance to go with that. | ||
| So what do you think? | ||
| I mean, doctors and hospitals have to have insurance. | ||
| Something goes wrong with the birth of your child. | ||
| It's a big lawsuit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, it is. | |
| Well, I think that the mother and father need to be well informed of what it takes to carry a baby, to have a pregnancy. | ||
| You need to be very vigilant about your diet and your exercise and your rest. | ||
| I would involve the father as much as possible in all of it. | ||
| Physicians need to be aware of, you know, family dynamics. | ||
| Not everything is as it should be at times. | ||
| And the litigious part of it, you know, things do go wrong sometimes, Mimi. | ||
| And it's not, I doubt very much if it's always medical malpractice. | ||
| Things happen. | ||
| And David is in Sacramento, California, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| What I think here is health care has always been unaffordable. | ||
| You know, it's even today and even in the 70s, if you can't afford it, you just can't afford it. | ||
| It's just like, you know, it's a priority in life. | ||
| You've got to have a car, a roof over your head, a job to pay for. | ||
| Well, health care is also a part of that. | ||
| Well, David, tell me what it used to cost in the 70s. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you remember? | |
| Yeah, it was about half of what it costs today. | ||
| But it was about $400, you know, about $400 and some dollars. | ||
| Now today, it's about $800 and some dollars. | ||
| You know, so yeah, it's gone up. | ||
| It's always been unaffordable. | ||
| And it's good to know that there are other ways to get health care. | ||
| You can serve in the military and become a veteran. | ||
| Or you can pay into the Medicare and hope nothing else happens to you till you become Medicare eligible or you become disabled in some way, you know, to be eligible for it. | ||
| But it's a necessity and it's something people shouldn't take lightly. | ||
| Medicare goes up every year. | ||
| I mean, healthcare goes up every year, every two years or so, and it never stops. | ||
| So it's going to keep rising. | ||
| As long as you got the government paying for it, it's going to keep rising. | ||
| And, you know, people, it's just a fundamental of life anymore. | ||
| If you don't have Medicare, things they need to be teaching the children nowadays is that's going to become a big necessity unless you want to become bankrupt and homeless. | ||
| All right, David, and here is Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent of Vermont, talking about the problems with health care in America. | ||
| It seems to me that the most important question that we should be asking ourselves is, number one, why is the United States, the richest country in the history of the world, the only major country not to guarantee health care to all people? | ||
| Simple question. | ||
| Number two, not unrelated, why is it that in the United States, despite the fact that we have 85 million people, uninsured or underinsured, that some 60,000 people a year die unnecessarily because they don't get to a doctor when they should because they're uninsured or underinsured, when we don't have enough doctors or nurses or dentists or mental health counselors, | ||
| when our life expectancy in the richest country in the history of the world is four years lower than OECD countries, and if your working class is significantly lower than that, why is it that half a million people in America go bankrupt because of medically related illnesses? | ||
| Those are simple questions. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, then maybe it's time we start asking. | ||
| So in all due respect, I would hope, Mr. Chairman, that the next hearing we have on this issue is we bring people from other countries who are providing health care to all of their people as a human right at a fraction of the cost that we spend. | ||
| So maybe we have somebody from Australia here, which has health care for every man, woman, and child. | ||
| They're spending about half as much. | ||
| We're spending close to $15,000 per person. | ||
| Our problem is not that we're not spending enough money. | ||
| We're spending a fortune. | ||
| The question is, where is that money going? | ||
| Who benefits? | ||
| Maybe we ask somebody from France to come here and explain to us how they guarantee health care to all people as a human right, spending less than half of we spent Canada, UK, Japan. | ||
| Japan spends less than $6,000. | ||
| We spend close to $15,000. | ||
| Somehow, they manage to provide health care to all people. | ||
| That was Senator Bernie Sanders. | ||
| Wonder what you think about that, what he just said about those other countries being able to provide health care to everyone at half the cost or even less. | ||
| Denise in California, Independent Line, what do you think, Denise? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's a very complex problem. | |
| I'm a healthcare provider. | ||
| So basically, when you compare other countries, the U.S., it's a very big country. | ||
| So if you take Australia or France or those places, they are like the size of one of a large state. | ||
| So therefore, their population, it's less. | ||
| And again, people are healthier, so they are do prevention. | ||
| They don't eat whatever they want and do whatever they want and then go to the doct go and see provider to be fixed. | ||
| So we as Americans have to take care of ourselves. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Number two, when you have a flux of illegal, okay, in the past when we had people coming to the U.S., we were selective in terms of people that could really provide something to the country. | ||
| Now we're getting people that they don't get screen. | ||
| And when we say that illegal people don't receive health care, maybe not, but they go to the emergency room. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| We have to pay. | ||
| So the more we have people that cannot sustain themselves, take care of themselves or pay for their care, then that's again the growth of spending. | ||
| So we need to understand economics when it comes even to healthcare. | ||
| And when we think about, and it's going to get worse, right? | ||
| So there's no way really when we're talking about universal health care that it can happen here. | ||
| We have too many people and we have too many people dependent on the government. | ||
| So for example, I can tell you, my son went to Europe and ended up at the emergency room because he fell or something. | ||
| They were doing something crazy and fell. | ||
| He went there, they took care of him. | ||
| But then when he returned to the U.S., he received a bill that he had to pay. | ||
| How much was it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The bill was over about 600 euro for all the things they had to do, X-rays, things like that, MRI to make sure there was no fracture, things like that. | |
| That's not a lot of money, Denise, for emergency. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I'm not sure MRI. | |
| No. | ||
| Well, he paid when he was there, he paid a little money, and then when he came back, they charge him. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| If they don't have to pay, it's not a lot of money because they don't have to, when you go to the emergency here, you have to pay for other people that don't pay. | ||
| For example, you go to the emergency and they give you a motoring that is two motoring that probably couple cents and you have to pay $40. | ||
| That's right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay? | |
| Because you have to pay for other people and that's the issue. | ||
| And then we also are so, you know, love legation where any little thing we complain that it's an issue and you have to get money. | ||
| When you go to those countries, you cannot sue your provider. | ||
| All right, so Denise, I got to move on. | ||
| Michael in Hagerstown, Maryland, Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mumi. | |
| This is Michael. | ||
| I recently, actually last week, submitted a healthcare policy to Mike Johnson and John Ten. | ||
| And basically, it's a four-part policy. | ||
| We've got to get away from the federal government being involved in everything. | ||
| The more they get involved, the more costs. | ||
| The same thing in colleges, tuition goes up, same thing in healthcare. | ||
| The Unaffordable Care Act, as an example, is simply a way of subsidizing insurance companies, and therefore costs are going to continue to go up. | ||
| So here's the four-part plan. | ||
| One is focus on community health organizations. | ||
| There's over a thousand already, and we could create one community health organization for every 100,000 or so population. | ||
| And that control would be local and county and would be funded. | ||
| And individuals and families without a primary care position would use these CHOs, I'll call them, for ongoing health care needs. | ||
| So that's the first part. | ||
| Second part is that insurance needs to be competitive across state lines. | ||
| Right now, there's a wall between states, and we need to allow competition. | ||
| That'll bring costs down. | ||
| Health savings accounts can be part of that insurance piece. | ||
| The third is risk pools for pre-existing conditions, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, can be created with both state and federal government to help the folks who are in that risk pool arena. | ||
| The fourth is tort reform for crazy lawsuits that are driving up the cost of medicine. | ||
| Like the lady said before, we all pay for people that are uninsured, and we also pay for lawsuits that happen. | ||
| Somebody has got to pay for them, and that's what's happening. | ||
| So Michael, you said you submitted this to Senator Thune and Speaker Johnson? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Did you hear back? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I just sent it to him a week ago. | |
| So I don't expect to get it back yet, but I hope to. | ||
| Have you talked to your congressman as well? | ||
| No, I haven't. | ||
| No, but I will. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| If you hear back, let us know, okay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I will. | |
| All right. | ||
| Here's Benny, Louisville, Kentucky, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Benny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Good morning, America. | ||
| I have worked for companies where I've gotten insurance through the company. | ||
| Commercial insurance is atrocious. | ||
| They don't want to pay for anything. | ||
| They jack up the prices. | ||
| And I myself, I'm 52, and I might go to the hospital or clinic for my refills two or three times a year. | ||
| But you get billed going in, you get billed coming out. | ||
| It's just, they want to deny paying. | ||
| And so I believe that there should be universal health care for all. | ||
| My mom, in her older years before she passed, was on Medicaid and Medicare, and it was pretty good. | ||
| I mean, as far as seeing her doctors, going to the hospital, being hospitalized, she really didn't owe anything. | ||
| And I think the problem with the Affordable Care Act was that they did not follow through with mandating everyone to get in it. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| You have people who can opt out, and you need everybody in to lower the cost. | ||
| So I think there should be universal health care for everyone. | ||
| I'm currently a contract worker, so I'm kind of independent. | ||
| And I've been looking at the Affordable Care Act, which I've been on it before about 10 years ago. | ||
| It was pretty affordable then, but it was a mandate. | ||
| Although some states didn't make people get in, that's the way to lower the health care costs. | ||
| So I think it should be universal health care for everyone. | ||
| All right, Benny. | ||
| Let's hear from Senator Roger Marshall. | ||
| He's a physician, a Republican from Kansas, talking at that same hearing. | ||
| I recall sitting in the doctor's lounge maybe a month or three after Obamacare was passed, and there were two conclusions in that lounge. | ||
| Number one is, oh my gosh, the insurance companies have written this bill. | ||
| We said that because there was going to be an estimated $50 billion of subsidies going directly to the insurance companies. | ||
| And today that's grown to $150 billion a year. | ||
| So American taxpayers are paying insurance companies exactly $150 billion a year. | ||
| The other conclusion was that this overregulation would lead to consolidation of the industries. | ||
| I mean, it was very evident the same thing was happening in banking and Dodd-Frank. | ||
| We knew that we're going to have to take nurses off the floor and bring them into data entry positions as well. | ||
| We knew the small doctors' offices, small hospitals could never take on all this over-regulation. | ||
| So here we are, 15 years later, and we understand that Obamacare has been an abstract failure. | ||
| You know, I say this because premiums alone going up 200% in many cases. | ||
| No one can argue this, that premiums are, that the ACA has led to premium increase. | ||
| I draw attention to specifically going from 2020 to 25, how it just takes off, the premiums take off. | ||
| Well, why? | ||
| We started adding in these enhanced Biden subsidies as well, and the insurance companies jacked up their premiums to go along with that. | ||
| And I think the other thing to point out is that just because you have Obamacare doesn't mean you have access to care. | ||
| If you're a single person with a deductible of $5,000, if you're a family of four with a deductible of almost $15,000 and you're making less than 400% of poverty level, there's no way that that's access to care. | ||
| So I came here saying that there's three principles. | ||
| This is 2016. | ||
| I ran on fixing health care in the Congress. | ||
| I said that we need to do two things. | ||
| Number one is we need to make patients consumers again. | ||
| Number two is we need to promote transparency, price tags. | ||
| And if you did those two things, if you make patients consumers again, you presented the consumers with options, then innovation would occur once again. | ||
| No one can do innovation right now because there's so many guardrails around what you can do or not do. | ||
| That was Senator Roger Marshall, Republican of Kansas. | ||
| This is John in Manning, North Dakota, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you. | |
| Thanks for letting me share. | ||
| Say, I'm 76 and a half years old. | ||
| I'm on a fixed income. | ||
| I get about $1,000 a month from Social Security. | ||
| I just got a letter in the mail a while back to say my insurance is going up from next to nothing because I was covered by Medicare Medicare. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's going up to $703 a month. | |
| I have complications from diabetes, including stage four kidney failure, cancer, and heart disease. | ||
| I just spent half of the summer in the hospital. | ||
| No. | ||
| I've had to deal with this for a while. | ||
| It just didn't happen all of a sudden. | ||
| I still don't know what to do about this. | ||
| I'm at a complete loss. | ||
| Loss. | ||
| But the thing is, I can't afford to even live anymore. | ||
| Goodbye. | ||
| Here's Ernie in Delaware, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I used to have pretty good health care insurance, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Gold Pan. | ||
| And now I have VA health insurance. | ||
| I'm a veteran, of course. | ||
| And I've noticed the difference between them. | ||
| I mean, the VA healthcare is way superior and more cost-effective than everything, I think. | ||
| I read a book called Best Care Anywhere, done by an investigative reporter. | ||
| And he said by his investigations, the VA healthcare system is the most cost-effective and highest quality health care system in the world. | ||
| Why do you think that is, Ernie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why do I think that is? | |
| Well, when I used to go into my regular doctor's office, when I had Blue Cross, I go in there and half the employees would be people filing paperwork for the insurance companies. | ||
| I imagine at the other end, they got a bunch of employees at the insurance company to file the paperwork back. | ||
| And everybody along the way needs to make a profit in the system. | ||
| The people selling you the drug, the doctor, the people giving you an x-ray. | ||
| Every step, every little step, everybody has to make a profit. | ||
| In the VA healthcare system, none of that exists. | ||
| You've eliminated like so many people, so much paperwork. | ||
| There's no insurance companies to make a profit. | ||
| You know, everybody gets a salary, you know, that work there. | ||
| Also, the VA healthcare system, mostly employees are in a union and it's government ran. | ||
| And how could that be the most cost-effective health care in the world? | ||
| And I hear all these politicians talk about, well, you can't have government health care. | ||
| I think the problem is if we should have total government health care with no private health care, except for maybe rich people. | ||
| Of course, you always have that. | ||
| All right, Ernie, let's talk to JC, a Republican in Richmond, Virginia. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I 100% agree with the fellow just came on just then. | |
| And I can furthermore explain to y'all that government-run system is more efficient and cheaper. | ||
| If Mimi, if you could pull up the difference between what it costs for traditional Medicare and then Medicare Advantage. | ||
| If you look up the statistics, both programs are about equally amount the same people. | ||
| And I think like 30-some million in each one. | ||
| But for some reason, the Advantage plan, which is private insurance, cost over $200 billion more than the traditional one. | ||
| I think it's like $300 and some billion for the traditional and $500 and some billion for the Medicare Advantage. | ||
| So if you pull those stats up and you look at it that way, you're like, well, there's your data right there. | ||
| You got about the same amount of people. | ||
| Which one's more efficient? | ||
| I think you could take a government-run system, put everybody in the traditional one, and take that $200 billion and pay and have no out-of-pocket co-pays or deductibles for the traditional one. | ||
| So why do you think there's a difference then? | ||
| What do you think is causing that? | ||
| Because of the profit motive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, like the guy just said, you got all these other people you got to pay overhead. | |
| You got to pay the representative. | ||
| And a lot of these people complain about what health care costs used to be 20 or 30 years ago. | ||
| They didn't have the advancements back then. | ||
| Back then, when you got diabetes and stuff like that or cancer, there was a death sentence within a few months, a year. | ||
| They got all the different treatments they got. | ||
| All that stuff costs money. | ||
| Back in the 60s, they didn't have MRI machines. | ||
| I mean, you got people going to MRIs and they're finding out things earlier than normal. | ||
| So you got to use common sense with stuff like that. | ||
| But I think that most people, if you gave the, if you told the VA people, hey, we're going to take your VA away if you want to take private insurance, they're not going to do that. | ||
| But then it's government, a lot of them don't realize, hey, that's government run. | ||
| So as you get the profit motive out of it, you get everybody on a single payer or Medicare for all system or whatever it is, the government. | ||
| And the government knows the thing is the government invests so much money in making a lot of these drugs available. | ||
| But the insurance companies are the ones on the people that make them on the ones that profits here off all of it. | ||
| The government gets nothing. | ||
| They got all the smartest kids in schools doing this. | ||
| And a lot of kids in school now, they'd rather go to finance jobs. | ||
| And, you know, they're very smart, but they don't want to take on the debt because it was of what it costs to be a physician or PA or whatever. | ||
| Maybe the government should think about, hey, telling these people, you do the school, you do a couple years in government or even in the private sector. | ||
| And we'll pay your tuition to get more people involved and going to school. | ||
| They're smart because that's why we have a shortage. | ||
| All right, JC. | ||
| And here's some more information from that poll we mentioned. | ||
| This is the Gallup poll. | ||
| We pulled it from USA Today. | ||
| It says this: that nearly half of U.S. adults are worried they won't be able to pay for needed health care in 2026. | ||
| One in 10 adults cut back on utilities, skipped a meal, or drove less so they could pay for health care or medicine. | ||
| 15% of adults borrowed money and rationed medicine due to health care affordability struggles. | ||
| And three in 10 adults said they skipped medical care in the past year because they could not afford it. | ||
| Getting your thoughts on that, Kent is in Ohio, independent line. | ||
| What do you think, Kent? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm also a veteran. | |
| And let me tell you, I went to Asheville. | ||
| I enrolled that day. | ||
| Told me to go down the emergency room. | ||
| Five hours later, I got an MRI. | ||
| And I think the reason for this is because the equipment is all bought and paid for. | ||
| I would like to see the government buy the hospitals and then allow qualified people run it for a cash basis. | ||
| So X-ray tech, they said, hey, it would also create competition within the medical community. | ||
| And people wouldn't have to pay for insurance. | ||
| They could just show up at a hospital and get done what they needed done on a cash basis. | ||
| Also, a simple at the cash register 10% sales tax would eliminate a lot of issues with the tax system. | ||
| And that's about all I got to say right now. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Donna in Baltimore, line for Democrats. | ||
| You're on the air, Donna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, so I have a comment and a question. | |
| My comment is: I'm in a healthcare field, MedTech, and I've been on my job for 15 years. | ||
| And I always thought that we had the best insurance. | ||
| I didn't have a copay for my primary care. | ||
| My specialist was only $20. | ||
| If I went to get blood work, if I had it done where I worked, free. | ||
| If I needed any type of procedure or surgery, if I had it done at the hospital where I work, free. | ||
| That has all changed. | ||
| And that's scary for me. | ||
| I used to carry my husband as well on my insurance. | ||
| And ever since this administration has got in here, everything, a lot of things have changed. | ||
| I can't carry my husband anymore. | ||
| I was paying for him. | ||
| Then I got a notice saying that they were going to surcharge me for carrying him. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Number two, I have a copay with my primary care. | ||
| I didn't use to. | ||
| I have one now. | ||
| My copay for my specialist has gone up. | ||
| What's 20? | ||
| Now it's $45. | ||
| I have to pay for blood work now where I work with 15 years, never at the blade board. | ||
| And I'm assuming if I have some procedures done, I'm going to get billed for it now. | ||
| And Donna, this is all happening this year? | ||
| Or has this been happening like slowly over the past 15 years, just this year? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This year. | |
| This is the first year I've been there 15 years. | ||
| I've been really lucky. | ||
| And my concern is I have GI issues. | ||
| So I go to the GI, my specialist a lot. | ||
| Well, if I see my GI, you know, four times a month, that's a lot of money for me. | ||
| And my question is: who sets the prices for any of these procedures that you're having, blood work or any type of procedures or surgeries? | ||
| Who in Apple Echelon makes these prices and why are they so astronomically high? | ||
| Is what I want to know. | ||
| All right, Donna. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Let's talk to Destri, Canton, Ohio, Independent. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I got three comments. | |
| One, I make $967 a month on Social Security. | ||
| My rent's $500. | ||
| I don't have no health care costs because I got Buckeye who I got Buckeye through welfare. | ||
| Number two, number two is I'm tired of these boats getting shot because I did dope for 45 years. | ||
| And anybody that does any dope can tell you that what he boats that he shot doesn't even cover a whole state. | ||
| That last boat he shot couldn't even cover one state. | ||
| It couldn't even cover it. | ||
| And number three, you know how they say Donald Trump was not guilty of anything? | ||
| Well, this woman worked at Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| So Dustry, we're getting off the topic. | ||
| Sorry about that. | ||
| Trish, Seattle, Washington, Democrat. | ||
| Go ahead, Trish, about your concern on healthcare costs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| Yeah, so listening to yesterday local news and another fallout from the one beautiful, excuse me, the one blank bill. | ||
| And Providence Swedish, which is a huge consortium of medical clinics, hospitals, et cetera, they're laying off 300 people. | ||
| Children's Hospital, They're laying off over 150 to 200 people. | ||
| And Peace Health is another, again, big consortium of clinics and hospitals. | ||
| They're going to be laying off another of approximately 400 people. | ||
| That's a lot of jobs. | ||
| That's a lot of jobs. | ||
| And then, you know, right before the holidays, because they just can't wait till afterwards. | ||
| But the best part is, is these, at least Providence slash Swedish, they have the audacity to ask to not have to pay for the business and occupant tax on business. | ||
| So I don't know where are we going to get the money to run the city. | ||
| We were already in the hole there. | ||
| And now these, now this, people don't have jobs. | ||
| They're not paying taxes. | ||
| Swedish prov, they don't want to pay their BO tax. | ||
| Golly. | ||
| That one. | ||
| Patrick, Columbia, Maryland, Independent, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I think this, I mean, I agree with some of the previous callers, but some of them I'm not totally on board with. | |
| I think that, you know, the lady that called in and said her health care, you know, was fairly cheap back in the 80s, having children and stuff. | ||
| And I think the biggest issue now is billionaires and people that are in the upper echelons of health care, that it shouldn't be for profit. | ||
| I think that if they start building profits, then that should go back into the system as either like research and development type stuff that the other colleague was talking about as far as like, you know, MRI and different types of imaging and different types of treatments. | ||
| So I was looking up and it says, you know, back in 1980, when that lady had her children, there was 13 billionaires in the United States. | ||
| And now in 2025, we have 902 billionaires in the United States. | ||
| So I think the biggest issue is the transfer of that money, of that wealth. | ||
| Instead of it being among the people, it's among the few. | ||
| And, you know, I don't think that someone else coming into the emergency department that needed an aspirin that I have to pay for, that, you know, whatever that $2 or that $13 is, is breaking the back of the healthcare system. | ||
| I think it's the multiple millions of dollars that we pay for these people that are in the upper echelons. | ||
| So I think the fix for that would be probably some sort of regulation. | ||
| So, because I'm here in Maryland, and so I remember a while back we had regulation over our utilities, and my, you know, my utilities were fairly cheap, you know, $100 or so a month for like electric. | ||
| And they ended that regulation saying that, well, we needed more competition. | ||
| And so when they ended that regulation, my utilities doubled. | ||
| So Patrick, that's the time we've got for this segment coming up on Washington Journal later. | ||
| We'll talk with two members of Congress about the news of the day, including the latest on the Epstein files. | ||
| But first, after the break, investigative journalist Dave Leventhal joins us to discuss potential changes to congressional stock trading law. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Join Book TV this weekend for the 2025 Miami Book Fair at Miami-Dade College. | |
| Our two-day live coverage begins Saturday at 10:30 a.m. and Sunday at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Highlights include discussions with historian Pamela Nadel with her book, Antisemitism: An American Tradition, an investigation into the depths of anti-Semitism's history and its recent manifestations. | ||
| Cartoonist Art Spiegelman revisits his Pulitzer Prize-winning series Mouse in his book, Meta Mouse. | ||
| The president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, Jeffrey Rosen, with his book, The Pursuit of Liberty, which explores clashing visions of Hamilton and Jefferson and the lasting effects on the power dynamics in America. | ||
| And CNN's Abby Phillip, with her book, A Dream Deferred, Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black Political Power. | ||
| Book TV will also feature author interviews with viewer Collins, with MSNBC's Jonathan Capehard, and his memoir, Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man's Search for Home. | ||
| Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vinman and his book, The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine. | ||
| Journalist Fez Siddiqui with Hubris Maximus, The Shattering of Elon Musk. | ||
| Biographer Sam Tannenhaus and his book, Buckley, capturing the facets and phases of writer and intellectual William F. Buckley Jr., and documentary filmmaker Laurie Gwen Shapiro on her book, The Aviator and the Showman, The Untold Story of Amelia Earhart's decade-long marriage to publisher and explorer George Putnam. | ||
| Watch the Miami Book Fair live this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, on C-SPAN 2's Book TV. | ||
| Also, be sure to get the full festival schedule online at booktv.org. | ||
| America marks 250 years, and C-SPAN is there to commemorate every moment. | ||
| From the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the voices shaping our nation's future, we bring you unprecedented all-platform coverage, exploring the stories, sights, and spirit that make up America. | ||
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to talk about the congressional stock trading. | ||
| This is Dave Leventhal, investigative journalist. | ||
| He's also contributing editor at Notice. | ||
| Dave, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great to be with you. | |
| All right, so the Stock Act was passed in 2012. | ||
| What does it say, and what was the impetus for passing that bill at that time? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Stock Act stands for Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act. |