Choices. So much choice. Thats our show tonight. And now, john stossel. When we talk choice, theres not much more important than health care. The president sold obama care saying it would lower costs and yet give us more coverage and more good choices. Winwin. Some people would gain better insurance and even if you didnt, you wouldnt lose anything. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. That doesnt work out so well, millions have learned that, no, you dont get to keep your doctor. 6 million policies were cancelled. But millions of americans who did not have Health Insurance before do have it, and that whats why obama care is good, says kathleen london with doctors of america who wants america to pay for more of our health care. So ckathleen, i agree with michael, but you say obama care is a great thing . Im looking at the number of people coming in who before had to choose between paying their represent or paying for health care or who couldnt get it because of preexisting conditions or other reasons who are now able to actually get coverage. Those plans that were cancelled werent really good coverage. These were plans that when you got really sick, they were going to be gone. Michael, greedy Insurance Companies were selling junk to people . Actually we know that the number one reason for example that plans didnt meet the obama care standards was they didnt offer sufficiently lengthy time if a maternity would be covered. Well, okay, thats fine, but if im a 55yearold gay man, im probably not worried about my maternity coverage. Were all in this together, dont we wan everybody cover rad . And lets give credit where credit is due, obama care has covered about half a Million People, but half of those have been pushed into about 5 Million People lost their Health Insurance, were forced to get other types of policies, i cant buy the type of insurance i want today. And in many indications im being pushed into an Insurance Plan that has a very Narrow Network and may not include my doctor. I want people to have skin in the game. We did that, it failed. Thats what we had before. No, we didnt. How did we not have a free market before . 90 of the bills were paid by somebody else. So if i went to see you, im not saying, hey, doc, do i really need this test . If i gave you the money, you wouldnt even have a cash box to take it. Because youre getting money from the Insurance Company. We havent had it since world war ii. That started because of trying to get another way of incentive to hire employees so that started all because of Big Government managing our lives, reducing our choices and now we have more of it with obama care. Insurance companies are more of the issue that youre discussing and the frustrations youre discussing. And i dont disagree on that market of it. Honestly as a physician, i have more problems dealing with private insurance than obama care. When the independent basement Advisory Board takes effect, the government is going too begin to ratchet down reimbursement rates to physicians. Thats bound to lead to rationing, increased demand, decreased supply, you zoonlt have to be an economic genius to recognize. Either you pay yourself, or the private Insurance Company or the government. I should ultimately make that decision. Pay your own bill. I should, but unfortunately, under obama care i cant because im mandated to buy insurance and mandated to buy a certain type of insurance that the has the benefits the government thinks i should have. Why do i have to have alcohol rehab coverage and diet care and maternity care. This all goes to that we are a society. Why dont i have a choice to get what i want . Because in the end, your dietary choices are something we all pay for. Diabetes is now the number one thing were now having as an epidemic in this country that were all paying for, and we do have alcohol problems. As for the maternity care, when we didnt have that mandate, when i was in medical school, i got pregnant before right as i was graduating and starting residen residency. There i am with my mz from yale, it was a preexisting condition, i couldnt get coverage. If you could afford the tuition at yale. You could pay your maternity bill. I was paying 20,000 a year as a resident and i couldnt get maternity care. There are ways to deal with preexisting conditions that dont involve overcharging Young Healthy people and making them subsidize older, unhealthy people. Why should someone be subsidizing insurance for Warren Buffett and bill gates. Thats what obama care does, it makes young people subsidize older and sicker people. One thing that obama care doesnt pay, lay sick eye surgery and doctors give out their personally phone numbers because they want to please the patient. Prices have not riszen near at the rate that insurance covered when you need by Pass Coverage you are going to pay out of pocket . I want a catastrophic policy that covers me being hit by a car or bypass saurj surgery, but the small stuff, i want to pay myself. What are you going to do about all the inherited diseases and everything else. Shouldnt everybody be responsible for their own lifestyle issues. If i go out and eat 20 big macs tomorrow, shouldnt i be held responsible. In and what about the again net aches, so theyre born missing a gene that needs an incredibly expensive therapy. We can deal with preexisting conditions, almost every proposal that replaces obama care covers people. But we havent dealt with it and kill obama care. Im not saying it was a perfect plan, but it was the one that we could get through that congress. It was the first one that addressed the preexist conditions, lifetime caps and all the issues that we do have that werent being addressed as and as we move forward, we will continue to form it into something that continues to get better. Because were all in this together, and others have to pay for my costs, do we need to ban cigaret cigarettes, alcohol . Shall we do mandatory call citizen nuclears in the morning . Now another fight about health care and choice, to me, an almost basic medical and moral question is, who owns your body . I would think you do, in a free society, that means you can take risks, go skiing, drive a race car, most importantly if youre sick, owning your bode means you can try a medicine that you think might help you. Any medicine, yet today in america, you cant, you cant try a medicine without government approval. Some people die because the fda will not approve. Michaela knapp died two weeks ago. Keith knapp lobbied members of congress and the media to save his wife, but ran out of time. Ran out of time. She died in april, the drug approved just last week. In another indication, two ploer brothers have an illness thats causing their muscles to wither away until they die. There is no known cure but the other brother was lucky because the fda allowed him to try the drug. Max is getting better, but his brother austin is not. My brother max can walk and i can only sit in my wheel chair and watch him. The government will not allow austin if austin is never given the chance to get on the drug, we know with 100 certainty that he will die. People die because government says no. But there are three states, colorado, louisiana and missouri recently passed laws that say if youre terminally ill, the choice is ours, sort of, you can try an experimental drug if you can prove that youre terminal, if the fd doesnt order the drug company not to give to it you. This small step toward san so am i characterizing it correctly, three states now will allow you to beg and try to scheme and get something that might keep you alive . Thats right. In those three states, people who are terminally ill are allowed to go around the fda to go to a drug company to ask for permission to try to save their own lives. But the drug Company Might stay i dont want to get in trouble with the fda. This whole shows topic is about choice and we are trying to give people who are dying the choice to try to save their own life without the governments permission. The fda look, if youre dying, we have something called a compassionate use process. Today they emailed us, we allow nearly every expanded request to it takes over 300 hours of bureaucratic paper work and wrangling to get through the process. And even though they might ultimately approve you, there have been a lot of documented cases of people actually dying while theyre waiting for the fda to make a decision. It can take years, it routinely takes years, they say hours. I am going to the drug company with an expe experimental drug,y will give me an answer, i will have a choice to try. John josh has als, his family initiateed this process. It took joshs family about 3 years, he has hired a law firm to get through the process, crazy thing about josh, his the compassionate ute process. The sfring thing about joshs story is that the drug that he a wanted to try was manufactured in virginia by an american drug. Company already legal in italy,t he just wanted to try it three years, they finally gave it to him after he had already lost the ability to walk, talk, feed himself and even swallow. C n its just bureaucratic narw mindedness . Theyre not mean people. A all of these safety re procedures that are in place at the fda came because theyre trying to keep people safe. And theres a good time and a aspirin and the tylenol and theu zyrtec we buy at cvs isnt goinn the kill us, but when you eer terminally ill, when your option the fda has to determine how theyre going to deal with these issues. Tweet, using the hash tag choice or post on my face bhook page. We would like to know what you u think about this. Coming up i put a pink mustache on my minivan to celebrate choice in taxi service. 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Were the party of choice, which is why i am tired, tired of republicans and others saying to me, i do respect your im tired of republicans saying to me, i do respect your choice, dont get an abortion. Democrats often call themselves the party of choice. But when they say that, theyre almost always talking about abortions, like theyre obsessed with abortion. But other kinds of choice . The right to choose your childs school, not to join a union, to buy a gun, to pay people like you want to pay them in your own business, buy what you want to buy, then democrats are not so big on choice, and as they grow government, we have fewer choices. Heres senator rand paul on that. Its light bulbs, its toilets, its cars, you name it, your freedom of choice is gone, for a party that says they are the pro choice party, this is the most antichoice administration we have seen in a lifetime. Yes, as government grows, free choice shrinks, so lets turn the democratic Big Government apologist allan goodall. First im a democratrepublic likes to vote democratic. I identify more with the l word than the dword. Lets start with school choice, why cant i take the government money and send my kid to whatever school i want . In sweden, for example, they tried it, it didnt work. They tried the Melton Freedman model. Some of those schools, those private schools are getting out of the School Business and kids are getting screwed, and furthermore, not only do you get to choose what school you go to, the school gets to choose whether or not theyre going to reject you, when the School Rejects you theres less choice. How is that working out for poor kids . It would work out a lot better if we put more resources into public schools. Don, why cant i have a choice to buy a gun here in new york city. Its not a matter of choice that one size fits all. You want the choice to have a Nuclear Weapon . You want a choice to have a cannon . I want a Nuclear Weapon on my front lawn. Do you want that . So youre not pro choice then. What if i want to make that choice . Lets talk about unions for a minute. When i worked at abc, i had to join a union called the American Federation of tv and radio artists. I didnt want to join, i am not an artist and i didnt want to pay the union. I wanted to be judged on my own merits and skills, i didnt want to be lumped in with rgeraldo, but i had no choice, but the union was a certified state. And you get the benefits that the union fights for whether you want them or not and the unions historically have fought for weekends, eighthour days, some basic minimum wage for people, the right not to have child labor. Unions fight for stuff that you benefit from. Why do i have to . Because everybody benefits t word collective sounds like communism, but we do live and work in a society where there is a collective wellbeing and you benefit as i have just been mentioning for the things that Union Members fought for, you get the goodie, you get the pension, you get health care, all those things that you get. I could form a group of correspondents and negotiate for a pepgnsion. But if you form a yuan on voluntary is better than force. You use the word force, i dont know if theres a crowbar in your hand. If i wanted to work there. But theres Mutual Benefit for all and you have benefitted by what unions have accomplished. I want the government to take over health care, it should be a right for all and we should never have to worry about getting basic care. On certain things, im not saying the government should tell you what to eat. Everybody should have health care, everybody should have education, everybody should have a warm radiator in their place of residence. We spend all this money on wars, no questions asked. Thank you allan combs, under the combs administration, youre going to be buying people warm radiators. Ill say right now im not running. Republicans are antichoice too, many of them are antiabortion, antigay marriages, antifree speech in some cases, so ill confront a republican next. And then is it possible to have too much choice . They got frappuccino, cappuccino, al pacino. Berkshire hathaway home services. Good to know. [ music and whistling ] when you go the extra mile to help Business Owners save on commercial auto insurance, you tend to draw a following. [ brakes screech ] flo unh. [ tires squeal, brakes screech, horn honks ] ooh, ooh [ backup beeping, honking ] a truckload of discounts for your business now, thats progressive. Rethink. Reimagine. Because right here, right now. 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John i called democrats antichoice, pro choice on abortion but they dont want to let me eat what i i call democrats antichoice, they want to let this suggests that republicans, while antichoice on abortion are pro choice about most other things, but they are not. They have their own things they like to ban. Tony perkins heads the Family Research council. Tony, why cant i take any drug i want . Its my body. It is your body, john, but the consequences are paid for by the Broader Society. So we all pay for the damage caused by cigarettes and alcohol. Should we ban them . Well, we certainly limit them, we restrict them, we dont ban them but what were talking about here is something that has been illegal that we are trying to make legal. For instance in alcohol, we tried banning that and it didnt work, because it was already legal and we tried to make it illegal. But thing that has been controlled is drugs, were talking about legalizing them. Once that happens, we cant turn back the clock on that. And the consequences will be quite significant for society as a whole. Well all pay the price for that. Im nervous that as i age and get sick, i would be in great pain. I would like the control to end my own life when i want to. Why cant i . Its a very difficult question, john, a lot of people have gone through that and they have struggled through those end of life issues, but lets look at what the actual numbers are, for instance, oregon where assisted suicide has been legal for about two decades. What about vermont and washington have also legalized it. Thats true, but we actually have history to look at. And in 20 years we have actually seen an increase in just general suicide, up about 21 . A lot of people dont succeed and literally were talking millions of dollars a year that taxpayers are having to pay as a result of those trying to end their lives unsuccessfully and their Health Care Laws in connection with that. But thats the aberration, if im in horrible pain, why isnt it my choice. Were talking about devaluing of human life. You say its your choice, your choice like the choices that we make every single day have impac