If you take a look at Medicare, there are things we could do, not just tort reform but truly reform the whole reimbursement system which will help in terms of reducing costs and creating the right kind of incentives for savings.
From this experience we have learned that in a big party it is important to have the necessary and often controversial discussions on policy issues such as the health system while in opposition.
We don't need something as large and complex and costly as the Affordable Care Act, because it can't work.
The problem of giving health care to everybody cannot be solved so long as we're spending huge sums of money for war. Already we have a very wasteful healthcare system, the most wasteful healthcare system in the world. I mean, we spend the most money and still have 40 million people without insurance. Compare us to Cuba. Cuba is our enemy, run by a dictator, Fidel Castro. But people in Cuba get health care at least equal to that of the United States - with very scarce resources. So I think this issue is the most important domestic issue.
With the Australian Government paying more of the hospital bills, it will have the incentive to make sure people are treated through less expensive and more appropriate primary care services.
It worries me about our unwillingness to really address reforms and modernization in Medicare. This thing was designed 37 years ago. It has not evolved to keep pace with current medical technology.
Working together in a bipartisan way, we can truly lower the cost of health care while improving quality for the American people.
Many of the issues I encountered as acting secretary were not with the quality of medical care but with getting our veterans through the door to reach that care.
Democrats are just as wrong to insist the law is perfect, that the law doesn't have things that need to be fixed, and to pretend that the law did wave a magic wand and make everything in the health care system fixed.
As far as I'm concerned, the more power we push back to the patient, the individual, the American citizen, the more responsive the system is to her needs. 'Obamacare, is responsive' is like a hammer is responsive to a piece of glass.
The Veterans Health Administration is a perfect case study of how government should stay out of patient care altogether.
The medical system in the United States is among the best in the world, if not the best. What if we were to make the United States a medical destination? That would bring a lot of people here because there are a lot of sick people around the world. If they can get U.S. treatment, they will take it, but now think about what that will do.
What you see is when the government gets involved, you run out of money and health care gets rationed.
