E-mail a friendBill Frist
airdate November 26, 2007
A pioneering heart-lung transplant surgeon, Bill Frist was elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee in '94 and rose quickly through the ranks to become Majority Leader. Fulfilling his pledge to serve just two terms, he left in '07 and has been mentioned as a possible candidate for governor of Tennessee in 2010. Frist sits on the board of trustees of Save the Children and, each year, performs surgery during medical mission trips to developing countries. He also co-chairs the bi-partisan ONE Vote '08 campaign.
Bill Frist
Tavis: First up tonight, though, I'm pleased to welcome Senator Bill Frist back to this program. The Tennessee Republican served, of course, as Senate majority leader from 2003 to 2007, following a successful career as a heart and lung transplant surgeon. He is now a professor at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and chair of Save the Children's Survive to Five campaign. He joins us tonight from Princeton, New Jersey. Senator, nice to have you back on the program.
Senator Bill Frist: Tavis, great to be with you, though not from Washington, but right here from Princeton, New Jersey.
Tavis: You went to school there, and you've had kids that went to school there. I was at Princeton not long ago, hanging out in the Frist Center that I assume you endowed or made possible. What's it like being back at Princeton all these years later?
Frist: Tavis, it's been great. I was actually in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs back a long time ago now, and to come full circle now and to be in those same rooms, this team teaching - still learning, but teaching those students - is really fantastic. We had a great class today, I learned a lot, hopefully shared a lot of my experience. Did what a citizen legislator should do - go to Washington for a while, and then got back out and did some other things.
Tavis: What are you teaching?
Frist: I'm teaching health economics, which again is big back where I was in Washington, D.C. It's big in Tennessee. Healthcare costs are the number one domestic issue in this country today. And that's what I'm teaching, so teaching at the graduate level, health economics, all the basics. Why is healthcare going up? What are we going to do about the 47 million people who are uninsured - the really big problems out there that we've got to face as a nation?
Tavis: Tell me what the parallels are, or put another way, how you continue the work that you did as a legislator, as a member of Congress, in the classroom discussing some of these same issues.
Frist: As you know, I did 20 years of medicine first, where the tools, one-on-one, doing heart surgery, heart transplant, treating heart diseases, listening carefully, making a diagnosis, treating, then being held accountable. Those tools did me pretty well, I think, pretty good stead in Washington D.C., where not many people listen very much and not many people are held accountable. And I did my best there.
And now in this sort of third iteration of sharing information I'm doing the same thing, and that is listening very carefully and sharing my experience on 12 years of policy in healthcare - the Medicare prescription drugs, looking at the 47 million people uninsured, health savings accounts - and coupling that with 20 years of experience in medicine, treating individuals one-on-one.
And now looking at issues of economics, both the cost and access and quality issues at home, but also those issues of global health around the world - things like the three million people who will die of HIV this year, the two million people and one million people who will die of tuberculosis and malaria this year. Those are the sorts of issues that we're addressing. I'm learning a lot and sharing what I know with the students here at Princeton.
Tavis: For whatever reason or reasons - I'm certain it's the latter - for whatever reasons, we've not yet gotten this healthcare thing right in America. When I say right, I don't know what you mean by that, we'll get your thoughts in a moment. But when I say right, I mean to suggest that as the world's last superpower, we have not yet figured out a way to give health coverage to every American as a right at birth.
We've not yet figured that out. I'm wondering, then, whether on the campaign train as you follow the race for the White House - I know you're supporting Fred Thompson, but whether you're hearing from the right or the left, Republicans or Democrats, anything about this healthcare debate that is encouraging you at all.
Tavis: Well Tavis, the politicians, the political figures absolutely have to address this cost of healthcare and the lack of access, the 47 million people uninsured. And I say that because we have this demographic shift that we all know about - the doubling of the number of seniors over the next 30 years, fewer people paying into the system, the cost of healthcare going up 2% or 3% faster than the growth of our economy every year.
All the obvious problems, they've got to be addressed by the next president of the United States. The Democrats are doing a good job, I think; not necessarily in the specifics of their plans, but it's out there, an issue. They're debating it, it's hotly debated. They put forth very specific plans, most of whom are addressing the whole issue of what you implied, and that is universal care.
Don't address costs very much. The Republicans, in large part because their constituency now, in the primaries, don't rank the cost of healthcare as high an issue as the Democrat constituents do. In this primary season, the Republicans have only put out principles and none have put out really detailed plans that address the organization and the financing and the delivery of healthcare.
That'll all change after the primary, and why I say that is because if you talk to people, whether in Nashville, Tennessee or (unintelligible) or here in Princeton or in California, it is the number one domestic issue on the minds of people all across this country. So it will be the number one issue in the presidential campaign, and that president will have to address it after they're elected.
Tavis: Two more quick political issues, and I want to jump right to this campaign for children that you're involved in. Since we mentioned Fred Thompson a moment ago, if I'm right about the fact that you are supporting him, why are you supporting Fred Thompson other than the obvious Tennessee connection?
Frist: Well, people say it's because of Tennessee, and it's not just because of Tennessee. It's because he is the individual into I've worked with every day for eight years - every single day. I've seen his consistent, consistent conservatism that has been reflected in thousands and thousands of votes in my conversations with him, and I think that it is conservative thought, based on principles of individual dignity and smaller government and less taxation - the sort of plans that he's laying out - with a direct, plain-spoken talk to the American people.
Forget the rhetoric. Forget all of the single lines that people are throwing out. He's concentrating on the substance in a plain-spoken way that the American people understand. Today he's doing very well in the national polls. He has a way to go in the primary states. But I think as that message of consistent conservatism gets out, he will do very, very well in these primary states as well.
Tavis: And I assume that prior to our conversation tonight, you heard that your friend and former colleague, Trent Lott, whose position you took as majority leader, has announced he will not stand for re-election again.
Frist: Well I did hear about that. I've not talked to him. I've also heard about all of my colleagues who are running and saying, now, what should I run for in leadership? Because these leadership elections for the Republicans and the Senate will be here shortly. I don't know if Trent announced yet exactly when it will be.
But those elections will be in the next couple of weeks, so a lot of them are looking for that position, as well. So I do wish Trent the very best. He did a great job in the United States Senate and served the people of Mississippi and this country very, very well.
Tavis: Tell me about this Save the Children campaign.
Frist: Well, I'm very excited about it, and it really comes down to this. Over the next 24 hours, 28,000 kids are going to die around the world. And people say, well, that's a huge number, and what a travesty that is. But the real travesty is about two-thirds of them are dying needlessly, and they can be saved - literally saved - with affordable, inexpensive, proven, low technologies out there.
Things like vitamin A, things like vaccinations, the sorts of things that we can distribute around the world at very little cost to the American taxpayer and literally save those lives. So it's not high tech, it's not expensive, it's a matter of distribution. So what I'm doing is chairing now with Bill Bradley, a Republican and a Democrat, a Survive to Five campaign for Save the Children, which is a very large, non-government organization that I've raised in about 42 countries around the world, focusing on these needless childhood deaths.
There's something that we can do, that we will do, and this Survive to Five campaign is a campaign here in the United States as well as globally to address that issue of saving two-thirds of those 28,000 people who will die.
Tavis: Put another way, there are 10 million children - 10 million - under the age of 5 that die every year in the world. Ten million kids under the age of 5.
Frist: That's right.
Tavis: How do you get traction? As horrific as that number is, how do you get traction on an issue like that in the United States when so many of these deaths, albeit children, are in places that we don't see, don't touch, and most Americans don't have a passport to ever travel to these places to begin with?
Frist: Well first of all, Save the Children is very active here in the United States as well. And I think the real point that we make is that with this oneness of humanity, being a child and dying as a child is something that is inexcusable whether it's in the Appalachian mountains where I'm from, or whether it's in Bangladesh, where I was six months ago.
The good news is that it's very affordable, and we have the tools. They were all demonstrated. Simple things like vaccinations, vitamin A, which costs just a few cents. I saw it in Bangladesh about two months ago when I was over there, and their childhood mortality - that is kids who die under the age of 5 - have been reduced by about a third in one of the poorest countries in the world by the application of these techniques - the vitamin A, the oral rehydration. In Africa, a $5 bed net can save the life of a child - $5. We know that today. It's not high tech, it's not expensive. All we have to do is have the will to act.
Tavis: I've only got a minute to go, Senator. Help me understand how you support these issues with the courage that you have and have done so for years, and at the same time supported president bush's veto of the SCHIP program.
Frist: Well, as you know, under the Republican leadership, working Republicans and in a bipartisan way with Democrats, we established the SCHIP program, a fantastic program back in 1997-1998. Serves about five to seven million people. There are three to four million people who can be on the program but are not yet enrolled; they need to be enrolled.
The president says that he wants to increase the budget of that by about 20 percent a year. The Congress, in a bipartisan way, says, no, we need to double that budget right now. What we need to do is come together as a nation, focus on the children - especially those children who need it, those below the poverty level - come together. It is inexcusable that our government is locked down on this issue.
Tavis: Former majority leader Bill Frist, now teaching at his alma mater, Princeton. Senator, nice to have you on the program and all the best to you in your work.
Frist: Tavis, great to be with you once again. Thank you.
Tavis: Thank you.
Back to November 26, 2007