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Our detriment and we're also putting enormous pressure, upward pressure on taxes and squeezing private incomes. so a decision is being made by the failure to control health costs. but you need to find some mechanism, either tighter government control or the substitute for the market imitating mechanisms to actually force the structure of the industry to change so it becomes less costly and offers a lot more high quality care. and that's what we haven't been willing to do. i don't think any of the mechanisms in the will bill will do that. >> the bill is making a lot of steps in that direction. ...

That's what history tells us, that's what the international experience tells us. so there's big reforms which will be slow to take effect about the way we pay for health care, about how we decide whether treatment should be applied, but all of that wrapped inside a package that finally gives more or less universal access to health insurance. >> robert samuelson, you have been long skeptical about the cost controls. >> by not controlling health spending we are essentially making this a series of unintended political decisions about what not to spend it on. we're not spending on schools, we're n...

Deficits are going to stand in the way of that. once we've established this. once we've established that there's a government responsibility to pay for essential health care for everybody, then we're going to be facing -- it's clearly going to be difficult to bring u.s. public finances under control. if congress says, well, we're going to start taking off all the controls, all the cost control measures here, they're going to have to say how are we going to pay for this. so the belief that congress is going to run wild and undermine all of the cost control efforts is actually wrong because ther...

Bunch of stuff about possible market failures, lack of information, market power, monopoly power. the various reasons why markets can fail. the thing about health care is every single one of those market failure arguments applies with a vengeance in health care. this is just not a case where the market can -- does a very good job. we have actually seen that. the proof of the pudding is the united states still has got -- we have the most privatized, most market-based health care system in the world. we also have the most expensive health care system in the world. that's -- in a way, the data ar...

The fact of the matter is that this is by the standards of how legislation has been done in the united states these past 30 years, this is a fairly responsible piece of legislation. >> paul krugman, robert samuelson, we'll be right back. the proof of the pudding is the united states has still got -- you know, we have the most privatized, most market-based health care system in the world. we also have the most expensive health care system in the world. buick lacrosse. d get inside each. and see what you find. if perfection is what you pursue, this just might change your course. meet the new c...