| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| It is not funded by the government. | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I thought you didn't get any money from the government at all. | |
| No, not at all, and we never have. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What a disappointment to Elon Musk. | |
| I'm sure he liked the dog to you. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Love C-SPAN. | ||
| Appreciate the opportunity to come out. | ||
| You know, I wish we could have a thousand C-SPANs across the media spectrum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Unfortunately, we don't. | |
| I think C-SPAN is a huge, huge asset to America. | ||
| Not just the coverage that we get of both chambers on one and two, but programs like Washington Journal that allow policymakers, lawmakers, personalities to come on and have this question time during Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's a huge benefit. | |
| I hope that all these streaming services carry C-SPAN as well because it's an important service to the American people. | ||
| I'm actually thrilled that this time in Washington Journal, I'm getting a lot of really substantive questions from across the political aisle. | ||
| Our country would be a better place if every American just watched one hour a week. | ||
| They could pick one, two, or three. | ||
| Just one hour a week, and we'd all be a much better country. | ||
| So thank you for your service. | ||
| 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 health care 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 health care 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 health care 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 up. | ||
| I mean, it's If you can imagine having a car payment that goes up 500% the next day, would you want to keep that car? | ||
| Or you'd be scared to use it, probably. | ||
| Well, I think 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, to answer that question is a little more complex than just saying yes or no. | ||
| The reason is, 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 that 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. | ||
| Try to buy food. | ||
| The cost of your food, if you avoid 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. | ||
| But the good news is this. | ||
| And that 13 percent that I belong to is now added another 30 percent. | ||
| Wait, Ron, so I'm curious about this 13 percent. | ||
| 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? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You measure that because of the fact that if you go to any, I don't know, well, look at, 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. | |
| You will see that that's 13% or more. | ||
| So Ron, I got to move on. | ||
| Martha in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Martha. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, 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 uh Tammy says yes, mine more than doubled. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Anthony, a Massachusetts Republican hi Anthony hi um, I have a an idea of why we we have, so we pay so much for health care and what I believe is that there is an incentive for um for various providers, like doctors or medical device providers, | |
| every anything to um to charge a lot to people who are either out of network, don't have a CA, or business paying their, their premiums and anybody else who's who's not in ACA or getting it from business. | ||
| Because if they do charge that and and and somebody pays a lot and just gets bad value, they can use that as a basis for their their starting negotiation like say, if they're they're negotiating for to get a high payment for out of network coverage, | ||
| they can use that overcharge, claiming it's their going rate. | ||
| And it's a big advantage in negotiations with companies and healthcare-like businesses. | ||
| got it, 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 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 Outline. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Good morning, America. | ||
| Just very concerned, very concerned about the health care 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. | ||
| 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. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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 Blaise 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, I have 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 in 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 percent reduction, Senator. | ||
| A 15 to 25 percent reduction in what? | ||
| In the overall health care spending for that family. | ||
| And does it negatively affect outcomes? | ||
| 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, there's more importantly, that has been pointed out by study after study. | ||
| And that hearing is on our website, cspan.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 to 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? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My wife's job. | |
| And obviously, I've got Medicare or Medicaid. | ||
| And, you know, I've got to be honest with you, I don't even take aspirin. | ||
| I just get through whatever is 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 letting everybody have the same care. | ||
| My envision in America would be to have a family doctor come to the house and say, oh, you ate too much candy. | ||
| 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. | ||
| 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
|
Right. | |
| 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 Potoski, Michigan. | ||
| Good morning, Kathy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Good morning, C-SPN. | ||
| I come from a family of medical workers going back to my great-grandmother. | ||
| I'm here in Petoski. | ||
| 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 at 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, the 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. | ||
| All right, now. | ||
| 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, healthcare 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 healthcare 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 for 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 what we spend. | ||
| 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. | ||
| 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 we compare other countries, the U.S., it's a very big country. | ||
| So if you take, you know, Australia or France or those places, they are like the size of one of a large state. | ||
| So therefore, the population, it's less. | ||
| And again, people are healthier, so they do prevention. | ||
| They don't eat whatever they want and do whatever they want and then go to the doctor, 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 screened. | ||
| 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. | ||
| We're going to leave this to take you live to the U.S. Capitol for a press conference with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| Donald Trump's presidency has been a disaster. | ||
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He's deeply unpopular. | |
| And Republicans have failed the American people on the economy. | ||
| The cost of living in the United States of America is completely and totally out of control. | ||
| Republicans promised to lower the high cost of living on day one. | ||
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Costs have not gone down. | |
| They've gone up. |