they push things through the way they want, they did whatever they want. when we get democrats in their trying, they don't want that. every time they want something pushed through it comes with playing colors -- [inaudible] >> host: did you want to respond? every two years, every member of the house of representatives, all 435 of us, are up for reelection. and 1/3 of the senate, every two years. so literally, that you have this political bloodbath every two years for control. certainly, the democrats are strongly in control at this time, and we as the loyal minority, work hard to get back

that control. when we are in control, the democrats -- and it is their job to do this, to try to block things that they truly are opposed to, that they that they think is bad policy and in some instances to block things for political reasons. the republican party does the same thing and that is the where system works. i'd like it anymore than you do, i'd like more bipartisanship and cooperation. we have great members on both sides of the aisle and may be one of these days of our lifetime we can get beyond that. it may take a viable third or fourth party in this country eventually to do that but i feel your frustration and i'd and on the opposite side of the aisle but they give for that call. >> will there be a bill on the president's desk? >> steve, i think there probably will be a bill on the president's desk this fall. i truly believe there is enough firepower behind and

determination, the president's is highly popular and those ratings have stayed up there and i think that there will be a bill but i hope that senator grassley and senator baucus and the finance committee can work in a bipartisan way. i know there are trying to do that and i hope our colleagues on the house side of my democratic colleagues when mr. waxman and mr. rangel and obviously speaker pelosi and will listen to our leader john boehner, the doctors caucus, the 15 of us of the republic and doctors caucus, the republican task force has worked diligently over the past months to come of with alternatives so that we can work together for the good of all americans especially those few to no fault of their own air out there with no health insurance coverage. >> congressman mr. gingrey of virginia, thank you. >> we continue our discussion on

health care system, vermonts center bernie sanders launched, join us on "washington journal" for 30 minutes. >> host: i want to introduce bernie sanders, thank you for being with us. your single payer plan, how what were? >> guest: it begins to do the major problems that exist in our current health care system and i think understands that the current system is disintegrating with 46 million without any health insurance, more who are underinsured and at the end of the day off we end up spending despite those results far more money per capita almost twice as much as any other country and our health care outcomes in infant mortality and longevity, disease prevention is not as good as many other countries. the reason to my mind why russia has into the fact that our system is geared toward making money for the private health insurance companies so i do want to shock any of the viewers with but the function of a private

health insurance company is not to provide quality health care to all people in a cost-effective way. is to make as much money as they possibly can and when you have that paradigm if that is what the goal of the system is you end up not only with 1300 in separate private health insurance companies but to end up with thousands of different benefit packages which cause enormous amount of money to administer so the bottom line is we are the most not only the most expensive but the most peer craddock and wasteful system in the world because we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars in administration, a profit-sharing for the insurance companies to profits have been doing well and giving exorbitant compensation packages to ceos a couple years ago. a fellow who is ahead and of united health act when $.6 billion in stock options etc. so the goal of health care

should be to provide the best quality health care to all of our people in the most cost-effective way into my mind the way you do that and what we have learned from other countries is a single payer system would work. >> host: this is from a physician and from canada, the pen and editorial this morning in "the wall street journal" called a candidate obama care president and the situation in the vetted kingdom but concludes with, wire are they rushing into a system of acb0ñ( government dominated health care when the very countries that have experienced it for so long are backing away? >> guest: i don't know that is accurate and the truth is we're the only country in the industrial world not to have a national health-care program so we are the odd guys out. a second if you compare the american system to canada it is true canada has problems and so we but we spend almost twice as much per person as the canadians do and if we spend that kind of

money to $.3 trillion, 18 percent of our gdp we can have a better system than the canadians. the direct question to ask is how does it happen that every other country on earth says health care is a right to all people, we don't do that, as second of all the end up coming up with a much more cost-effective approach and their outcomes in many cases in the mortality, life expectancy, preventable deaths are better than we do. i think the evidence is overwhelming. our current system is not working and have to move in a very different direction, we have to have the courage to take on the private insurance companies to spend hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying and campaign contributions, the drug companies' charges the highest prices and have a very powerful lobbying force in the sea. >> host: can you clear up the discussion in this town over a single payer plan and what the

chairman baucus who will and won't put on the table -- is it on the table? >> guest: what baucus is is tight range in a meeting between positions interest organizations and i think what he said was months ago single pair when he indicated was he regretted setting backed, he should have held a hearing and should have listened and apologized for that but the truth of the matter is in my view speaking only for myself the power of the insurance companies to make so much money out of our current health system and the drug companies is so short that it is very hard for us to get the kind of hearing and the time of success we need to move toward a single payer system. >> you say the interest or influence in the debate? >> guest: i think it owns the debate and i want to shock you but, in fact, discuss this but hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure we do not have a cost-effective a comprehensive and universal health care system

that guarantees health care to all people. >> host: what does that tell the person out there who doesn't have insurance wonder what happens next? >> guest: there's a lot of debate and after i leave this interview in a couple of hours will be meeting with the health education labor committee and we don't know what the end result will be. it is possible we will make some progress in terms of prairie health care in terms of disease prevention in terms of making health care more affordable to people who don't have health insurance but my concern is that we're going to be pouring huge amounts of money into a focus which is largely dysfunctional and that means it is like a leaky bucket you keep pouring water into you'll have some good success in keeping water in the bucket and putting more in rather than understanding why the system and is so wasteful and inefficient. in california the understanding

is one of three health-care dollars goes not to doctors, not to nurses or madison, not to making us well are keeping us from getting sick but goes to administration and that is basically the crux of the problem might now appear in our system is designed to make money of the drug companies and insurance companies not to provide quality health care to all people and i think we've got to change direction in a substantive way. >> host: one of the debaters on the health care is the subject in the washington post on the cusp of historic majority senate democrats missed the tillers and also reference to senator robert. who is 91 per senator kennedy who is battling brain cancer and i quote from your colleague mitch mcconnell saying it is hard to imagine a senate without them and also a story inside "the new york times" and i quote from senator jack reed of roe island saying we would like to see senator kennedy here for many reasons but we're going to move forward without him.

will he be part of this debate? >> guest: i don't know, he was part of a teleconference call and sounded good and. he probably will be there and i think chris dodd will lead up but the other point i want to make when we talk about health care, is not just a personal issue with people uninsured and underinsured who were paying close to $8,000 is what we're paying per person which is unsustainable, is an economic issue and everyone's talking about gm going bankrupt but they today spend more money per automobile on health care than they do on steel and in my state of vermont and all over the country's small businesses just cannot afford to put more money into escalating health-care costs when the would like to reinvest in their business and create jobs and make money. so we have as the president points out not just a crisis at the individual level but a major economic crisis that we have got to address and that is why we need real health care reform

this my john webster who agrees in sending a tweed say regrettably are doctors and insurance companies are thieves and any national health care like other developed countries. >> guest: let me also say this. the concept of a single-payer is not a fringe idea. you have 15,000 positions in this country, 15,000 who supports eight single-payer system. we have the largest nurses organizations in this country that supports single-payer, there are sick and tired of being told what to do by the private insurance companies and of a study that came out where doctors are spending between two and three weeks just arguing with insurance companies about the kind of therapy that they can prescribe. uses are doing the same thing. people go into medicine and nursing and want to practice their profession, they want to work with people, not screaming and insurance companies which prevents them from doing what they were trained to do.

>> host: senator sanders is our guest, j.r. from kansas city is on the phone. >> caller: everything sounds like to talk about if i could. c-span, we found out that in kansas and they have a 10 year patent rights and in america we have a 20 year patent right. why is it that our congress hasn't done something about that? began this pharmaceutical companies the right to charge as much as they can for madison for 20 years. it takes away from anything we can possibly do and then the other thing is i have a nephew that just became a chiropractor and i was talking to him. his education has cost them more than a quarter of a million dollars before he ever gets a chance to work as a chiropractor

>> guest: let me answer to questions, i live an hour away from the canadian border and knows the first member of congress when i was in the house to take americans over in the canadian border to purchase prescription drugs in montreal and i will never forget as long as i live in the expression on the face of the women many more with a struggling with breast cancer and they bought a drug at that point called tamoxifen is used for breast cancer and they paid a one-tenth the price in canada the same exact madison they were buying in the united states. i should tell the caller that right now as many of us are fighting for a program called the importation of madison so that americans do not continue to get ripped off by the drug companies and have to pay the highest prices in the world. in terms of education again one of the problems we have is many people who graduate medical

school today are very deeply in debt. and the university of vermont medical school is 150,000, a dental school is even more. what we are trying to do it and have succeeded doing in the stimulus package is greatly expand the program called the national health services corps which provides debt forgiveness for the doctors to work in underserved medically underserved areas. we need to get more doctors out into areas where people need them from primary health care, more nurses and dentists out there. we're making success but we have a long way to go. but the cost of medical education is such the average person graduates 150,000 of that and they will go to be a specialist to pay off that debt and that is a real problem this mac the former mayor of burlington, patrick is on the phone from atlanta, good morning. >> caller: good morning. a senator sanders, i want to thank you for your honesty and

your service. you always talk truth and you always, there is never any special interest money behind your campaigns. you always represent the people and i want to thank you for your service. the -- my question is what are we going to do against insurance companies when in the bill is going to the congress and they tried to strangle it the same way they did in '94 with hillary's care? >> guest: let's be clear where we are to get single-payer for the moment. to the best of my knowledge there is no republican, not one that wants a public plan. is strong and at the very least a medicare plan for all americans. you have some conservative democrats who are also wavering on that issue. i think what we need is to answer patricks question is strong grass-roots movement which says that health care in

america must be a right of all people, it doesn't make any sense that a working person who may work in a company that doesn't provide good quality health care can go bankrupt if they end up in the hospital also mills as good care. it doesn't make any sense we spend almost twice as much as any other country and it health care has got to be a human right for all people and we need to mobilize in the same mike patrick that we dealt with civil-rights, a struggle that one on for decades that we dealt with women's rights and other fundamental injustices in america. this is a civil rights issue ever time. it is wrong that families are going frank rep. and ron that because they can't afford it health care, it is wrong in my view that millions of people -- we have 60 million people in america today will not have a doctor of their own and have almost 20,000 people who die every year from diseases which are preventable because they never went to the doctor. that is over six times every

single year the people we've lost on 9/11. this is a moral issue, a civil-rights issue and our position must be health care for all people, quality health care regardless of income and we can do that in my view if we take on the private insurance companies in the drug companies without spending any more than the amount of money we're spending today -- that is the struggle. >> host: a democratic lobbyist worse for ogilvy associations and this is a roll-call, quoted as saying this, a potential challenge looms for the washington leadership of the trade associations with reference to health care association's >> guest: i don't get it? i am not sending a roaring about lobbyists. there are the bloody problem.

whenever you getting back to that question about prescription problems. the pharmaceutical industry over years has been hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying congress, and huge amounts of money and campaign contributions and they never lose. they have never lost in a battle with congress so i don't sit around worrying about lobbying. we have too many lobbyists these guys are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year presenting big money interests. i think maybe we need more energy for ordinary people in the middle class and working people. >> host: the essence of the story is republican allies are mounting an offensive to put the brakes on president obama's health care plan. >> guest: their job is to represent the insurance companies to make sure that ceos can make tens of millions of dollars a. companies are very profitable and i could care less that millions of americans are paying far more than they can afford.

we are spending about $7,800 per person, can you imagine? what is the family that make 30,000 a year due? it is going up and up. 46 million without any health insurance and these guys are worried about the profits of the insurance companies -- that is an outrage and a half two have the courage to stand up to them. >> host: republican ron, from savannah. >> caller: good morning, senator saunders. the information and the conversation you're having the majority of it is true. the representative from georgia was not telling the truth as it relates to the insurance information. i have three insurance policies. i am a retiree and one is the my job which i contributed, one is the man has been which he pays nothing and that is because his

was through a union and he pays their union dues and when have you. and the other is medicare i am still paying through the nose for my share of health coverage. i have two types of drug coverage, one to my own personal retirement plan that i had before and wanted my husband. i have a chronic illness with my drug company i paid $10 -- $20. demy has been the same medication costs me $10. in no, they are in cahoots. >> guest: here is the point. in health care is expensive, and a system in the world as expensive but it makes no sense

for us to be spending an estimated 350 or $400 billion a year in a voice will the minister in a cost. we have an enormously complicated system. all of us will remember during the campaign i happen to think it is one of the reasons obama won the election, he was talking about his mother who was dying of cancer trying to summon up her energy to be strong, having to fight with the insurance company for coverage and all over america that is what is going on. in the last 30 years we have seen 25 times more jobs created for health-care bureaucrats who argue with us about whether or not we're cover that we have seen an increase of physicians. we need more doctors and dentists, we need more nurses and we're not getting back. we are paying to that knows for health-care bureaucrats who are out there are doing with us about whether or not -- we have an enormously complicated

systems of the way you save money is to come up with a simple system and frankly no system is prepared but at the end of the day you say you are an american and will have all of the health care that she needed. is going to be paid for about the public system and out of taxes and your not glen to be paying for health insurance and not having 60 different programs there. everybody will get the same quality health care and if we move in that direction we save hundreds of billions of dollars in administration and put that into coverage for all americans and i think we have the best system in the world. >> host: jim said in a, what i propose a bill to ban insurance companies and seems to be your goal to put them out of business. >> guest: is our goal and we have introduced legislation call the single-payer. >> host: garrison is next from the state of wisconsin. >> caller: good morning, senator, thank you read much for the fight you're putting out. i am 70 years old retired

dentist had three major surgeries, to her surgery's and prostate cancer surgery. my wife has been forced out of having health insurance and we are at the brink of bankruptcy. and i fought very hard to get president obama elected and i have become very bitter and very disillusioned when you have somebody like senator baucus who want to give a single-payer people a seat at the table and he is taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from the people that are creating this situation we have in this country. i would very much like to see a bill passed if it is possible that no one in congress takes a dime from these people. not one dime.

they are ruining our country, they could care less about anything that has to do with what is good for the people of this country this mighty race in a issue ended has to do not just with health care, not just with the cost of prescription drugs, not with the deregulation of a wall street and the crips could lead us into a major recession. what we are talking about is the impact big money has on the political process in washington and i think the caller is right. it's an extremely negative impact in my view that is why we have to move toward public funding of elections. candidates and incumbents members should not be dependent on big money interests because i'm afraid that dependence is two legislation which does not work for ordinary people. the gentleman talked about bankruptcy's and here's an interesting point -- in 200762% of bankruptcy is in this country

were related to medical bills, 62% and the majority of those people have health insurance. so even in many cases you have health insurance, if you have a large deductibles an insurance policy doesn't cover all of your needs you can go bankrupt at large numbers of people are doing that. >> host: john e-mail the question, currently is regulatory and bureaucratic mess. however, dormant bank is better? howarth a single-payer system and all the corporate cronyism that comes with the help? >> guest: nothing is prepared but this is what we have so far you have a veterans administration that doesn't have its problems, sure it does but i'm on the committee and when i can tell you is veterans wrap this country by and large are supportive of the system which is run for more cost-effective way than most other hospital and medical programs. you have medicare. it doesn't have problems? it does the did minister in a

cost of medicare or a fraction of what private health-insurance costs arm. it runs more smoothly. i think the goal that we have is to create a simplify the system because the complexity of the current system has to do with insurance companies among other things cherry picking saying we want to cover you because you have won the marathon and your 20 years of age and we're sure you're not going to get sick and, on the other hand, if you are 50 years of age and had a cancer operation we don't want to cover udall because we're going to lose money on new and becomes a very complicated process to cover you and not cover them. and what we have got to say is we're all in this together and we're all going to get coverage and going to do that delivery system and the most cost-effective way and put more money into disease prevention and more money into primary-care 60 million americans today and you can believe it to not have

access to a doctor on a regular basis of what happens when they get sick and other go to the emergency room at expensive care or sit in and up in the hospital and the nature of private insurance is not to address those needs because many don't have a whole lot of money so we need to simplify and a comprehensive system and i believe we can do that. >> host: will senator baucus told a hearing on the single-payer system? >> guest: what he indicated to the people was to apologize, he thought he should have done that and he thought wasn't 100 percent sure that at this stage in the process probably too late for the finance committee and, on the other hand, on health education committee which is dealing with this issue i believe we will have a testimony to the best of my knowledge from single-payer advocates. >> host: who is leading the effort who is of the point person? >> guest: senator dodd is at this moment taking most along with other senators, we are

meeting as i mention later on this morning will be going on for three or four hours going down the bill so there is leadership. >> host: is senator baucus open to your ideas? >> guest: to a single-payer? not in a million years. >> host: does that bother you? >> guest: it bothers me, it is not just senator baucus it is virtually every republican. i am an independent. and am i going to sit here and tell you that democrats are immune from any pressure? of course, they are not. we have some wonderful democrats or writing to do the right thing but you have some conservative democrats will work with the republicans but from a political point let me say this. there are some people who say we've got to move toward in a bipartisan approach which means we have to have a cloture on a filibuster which means you need 60 votes which mean you have to make major compromises.

my guess is and maybe wrong in this but my strong feeling is if we end up with a bill that has sisera 70 votes it will be such a weak bill that will not accomplish with the american people want out rather pass a strong bill with 51 those than a week bill with 65 percent of votes. a bottom line is the current system is dysfunctional and we're wasting 300 and $400 billion and need to move toward a cost of active universal program, we have to move in that direction. this is a human rights and we have to have the courage to take on the drug companies and insurance companies who answered the enormous power in washington. >> host: a republican from iowa. >> caller: i have a quick statement than a question. the biggest problem is greeted echoes of the largest politician all the way to the individual, that is what i believe. no matter what system is put in