Costs, Government’s Role Split Advocates in Reform Debate

JUDY WOODRUFF:

As the fight over reforming health care spreads from here in Washington, D.C., across the rest of the nation, we hear now from advocates on both sides of the issue.

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey is chair of FreedomWorks, a conservative group that has rallied protestors at health care town hall meetings.

And Richard Kirsch is the national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, a liberal group which has urged its supporters to turn out at the meetings.

Thank you both for being here. We thank you for being part of this discussion.

And, Dick Armey, I'm going to come straight to you on the basics. You believe that there should be some form of reform of health care, health insurance, but a more limited form than what the president favors.

DICK ARMEY, FreedomWorks:

Yes, I do. And we go back to things I've argued for, tort reform is — estimates now as much as $100 billion of just sheer abject waste, which, by the way, is a hardship…

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Tort reform, for those people who don't know the legal term, means…

DICK ARMEY:

Well, lawyers suing doctors and that which causes doctors to order up extra procedures on behalf of patients that are not needed medically, but they need them in case they end up in a courtroom.

I watch this process. The thing that breaks your heart about that is, especially with older folks, to be subjected to extra procedures that are not medically necessary is a very difficult burden for them to carry when they're already oftentimes quite fragile and the procedures themselves can be quite a stressful experience for them.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

So tort reform would be an important change for the system?

DICK ARMEY:

That would be a good place to start.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Would that be enough, Richard Kirsch?

RICHARD KIRSCH, Health Care for America Now: That's not the problem Americans face, Judy. Basically, what Americans face is a problem of they don't have a guarantee of good health care they can afford.

Three out of five of the personal bankruptcies in this country are because of medical costs, and most of those people have insurance, but the insurance isn't there when they need it, because if they get seriously ill, it stops paying.

Did you know that premiums in the last decade have gone up four times as fast as wages? People can't afford to get health coverage.

And so we have this tremendous sense of insecurity, and what people need is a guarantee of good, affordable coverage at work or, if they don't — if they're not at work, to have that coverage there, too. And what we're talking about is basically saying to America: You have good coverage that you can afford.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

And you're saying provide that how?

RICHARD KIRSCH:

Provide that very simply. What the reforms that we're looking at do two things. First of all, they say, if you're at work, your employer is going to continue to provide coverage at work, or — and the coverage is going to be good, because there are going to have to be a specified set of good benefits, and if you don't have coverage at work, you're going to go into a new health insurance marketplace where you're going to have a guaranteed choice of coverage that's affordable based on what you earn. It's very simple.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Why isn't that a system that would work?

DICK ARMEY:

Well, the biggest problem that they have with this — this sounds great. I mean, I have to tell you, you're warming my heart.

RICHARD KIRSCH:

It is great.