was that people using hospital emergency rooms for their primary care driving up health care costs like crazy. so we wanted to say if we could incentivize you to do care with a physician beforehand, preventative care and get you free prescription drugs, we can have a win, win, win. sounds great. who is paying for it? that s the thing. we brought together pharmaceutical companies along with a great foundation, the heinz foundation to create a model program and the pharmaceutical companies love it. foundation work is doing a great thing. it s a public/private partnership driving down costs and saving us as taxpayers a lot of money because now people aren t knowing when it s really expensive, when the problem becomes an emergency. how does this mirror the obama health care initiative? it s not really an either/or. we should be looking at a lot more local initiatives to deal with chronic illnesses and deal with the challenges of cost. i mean, the obama health care
is all those people are getting health care in a terribly inefficient way, if nay slip and fall or get hit by a bus or get h1n1 flew they are going to hospital emergency rooms. or going bankrupt trying to pay the bill. that s exactly right. what you said about the republican thrust is exactly the conversation going on with wavering members of the house. we are saying, look, you are going to get beaten up on health care whether you vote yes or no. if you vote no and this bill goes down they are going to keep making stuff up. if it passes you are defending an actual thing. we have compromised a great deal. whether or not we will allow more and more people to lose their urp health insurance. incomes for people have been flat in the last ten years because every dime employers have are going into health
to cover all americans eventually and we are approving the senate bill with some elements of the house bill to cover more people. you re right. all of the thumping of chests about the undocumented, they re not going to get coverage in the plan. they are still going to walk into hospital emergency rooms, get care and pass the bill to us. we ll still have gaps because there is no employer mandate in the final bill. these are, indeed, the art of sacrifice and compromise. i m not thrilled about it, but i can tell you this. we can t let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. the senate bill with some improvements is far better than the status quo. i want to broaden our conversation with adam greene, cofounder of the progressive change campaign committee. good evening, adam. let me start with a quote from the statement your group signed onto saying, quote, the public option will live or die based on nancy pelosi s next moves. can you still make that case after hearing what congressman
ted kennedy. stay with fox news on this breaking political news. democratic congressman chris van holland says don t blame me. what is he talking about? find out in a minute. he went on the record about the future of the health care bill. president obama said he s not going to depart from the existing two bills in the house and senate. the republicans say that is a nonstarter. how do we get traction and get a real discussion and dialogue going? the two sides seem to be at odds. i think we have to agree on the objectives that we ve got. what the president has said his objective is to make sure we bring down premiums that we deal with the health care in a way that reduces the deficit and cover many people who are not covered today. at the end of the day they are costing all of us more in the system. because they are going to the hospital emergency rooms for their first line of preventive care as opposed to getting health care through the primary care doctors as most
ted kennedy. stay with fox news on this breaking political news. democratic congressman chris van holland says don t blame me. what is he talking about? find out in a minute. he went on the record about the future of the health care bill. president obama said he s not going to depart from the existing two bills in the house and senate. the republicans say that is a nonstarter. how do we get traction and get a real discussion and dialogue going? the two sides seem to be at odds. i think we have to agree on the objectives that we ve got. what the president has said his objective is to make sure we bring down premiums that we deal with the health care in a way that reduces the deficit and cover many people who are not covered today. at the end of the day they are costing all of us more in the system. because they are going to the hospital emergency rooms for their first line of preventive care as opposed to getting health care through the primary care doctors as most