thanks so much. >> my pleasure. >> up next, reporter documenter film correspondent and author t.r. reid joins booktv for a live three our in depth interview. . . you've written by healthcare, international relations, ski resorts, the roman empire. how do you choose your topics?

>> guest: well, partly -- i guess what i write for money. dr. johnson famously said no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. i don't even succeed. some of my books have really flopped but -- i try to find a topic that looks complicated but can be penetrated with some work. and then i try to explain it in an engaging, understandable way. it's hard work. but that's what i try to do. i try to find something where people say, oh, god i'll never figure how the how a calculator can add 2 plus 2. and that's what i explain to people. that's what i'm looking for. >> host: what book has flopped? >> guest: oh, let's see. which of my books has flopped. the first time i brought out -- i wrote this book called "the chip" it's about the two americans who invented the

microchip and basically they changed the daily life of the world. they are thomas edison and alexander graham bell. they were living in america when i wrote this book and nobody had ever heard of them. and i thought, boy, here it is. everyone would want to know that we america gave this great creation to the world and it was two americans. one guy from iowa. one from kansas. nothing. the book got very good reviews. it made a bunch of those, you know, best 10 books of the year kind of thing. and didn't sell a whip. i thought i was going to get rich on this book. nothing. but very good reviews and everything. and that book came out around 1985 or '6. >> host: 1986. >> guest: '86. yeah, and my wife and i kept saying to each other well, you know, it was a decent book but it was ahead of its time. it was before most people had a computer so they weren't into microchips, you know? in 2000, i was living in london and my editor called me up from

random house and said hey, this is amazing. that book is selling like mad. it's 14 years later and we're really going to get going on this book. it was basically the same book but all of a sudden people were intereed. what happened? well, jack killby won the nobel prize in 2000 and americans were interested in him and there was my book sitting there. here's what happened, i went to stockholm with jack and his family. he's just a wonderful, wonderful in every way and he got the nobel prize in physics. if you give the nobel prize in physics the only requirement you have to attend this fancy dinner with the king. and you have to give a lecture, a nobel prize lecture and jack gave his lecture and some physicist in stockholm introduced him and said this is the man who gave us the calculator, the computer, the internet, the digital tv, the cell phone, the ipod, blah, blah, blah.

because he invented the basic tool for all that and jack kilby, what a wonderful guy, here's what i say, i hear that a lot that i created the whole digital world. i invented one little part of it. it was all the other engineers who made the thing work. he said whenever i hear that, that i created everything, he said it reminds me of the time there were a beaver and a rabbit who were sitting beneath boulder dam and the rabbit looks up at this massive structure dam and says to the beaver, did you build that. no, but it's based on an idea i had once. that was jack kilby. anyway, so at that point, i rewrote the book. we brought out the book "the chip" again in 2001. with sadly reporting the death of bob noyce one of the two ventres.

-- that book is selling pretty well in the second version but still i wouldn't say it achieved its goal which was to remind americans that it was a guy from kansas and a guy from iowa who invented the microchip and changed the world. i'll tell you an interesting story, peter, i was on a talk show talking about that book, a radio show -- this is how you sell books. and a very funny guy, woody page was a host and he was kind of ragging me, you know, and he said ah, come on why would you write a book about the invention of the microchip. nobody knows who invented the microchip. yeah, that's why i wrote this book. nah, nobody heard of these guys. if anybody can call this show in the next hour and tell me who invented the microchip, i'll buy them dinner for two. says woody page, right. and kind of this smirk on his face, and 10 seconds later the phone rings. a caller calls up and it's this very polite 10 or 11-year-old kid, very polite. he said well, sir, i know who

invented the microchip, sir. it was robert noyce and jack kilby and he got it right and woody paged to buy this kid dinner. it was my son. it was my son who called the show. so at least he knew. so it was a great moment for me. so i would say -- you know, i worked hard on that book. i think it's a good book. i'm proud of it. in terms of achieving its goal, which was to let americans know that bob kilby -- bob noyce i'm sorry, and bob kilby changed the world never succeeded. >> and bob went on to found what company? >> intel. he founded intel. and made hundreds of millions of dollars. he was an early investor in apple. he was just a very, very smart engineer and businessman. jack kilby never made a ton of money off the microchip but you

know what? i don't think that ever mattered to jack. jack was an engineer. he defined an engineer's job as identifying an important problem and solving it. and he did. jack came up with the guts, the idea that made the current digital age possible. i think jack always knew that he had taken on a very important idea and come up with a good solution, and that was more important to him than money. >> host: how revolutionary was the calculator back in the early '70s? >> guest: well, there were desktop calculators at that time. this is kind of ringing in my ear. can we fix it? . >> host: yeah. >> guest: there were desktop calculators at the time. they were really big and they had an arm like a slot machine and you typed in the numbers. to have any device, a computer that you could hold in your hand -- that was really an amazing breakthrough. i think the most important application -- first application of the microchip -- the

microchip -- until the microchip came along, there were computers in the world, but they were so big they filled an entire building. the one -- there was a big computer in philadelphia. and whenever they turned on the power for it, lights dimmed all over the city because the thing consumed so much power. it was just huge. and expensive. you couldn't proceed more than 10 or 12 of those in the entire world. and jack reduced the size of that computer to -- you know, you could have a computer that size in your watch today with no problem, whatsoever. that power. so that was really the revolutionary breakthrough. they made possible the digital age. and the first really important application jack and bob invented the microchip in '58 and '59, and lo and behold in 1961, along comes jack kennedy

who says i want to send a rocket to the moon by the end of this decade. you couldn't do that because you couldn't fit that era's computer into the nose cone of a rocket but with the microchip suddenly you could deceive a computer powerful enough to steer a rocket to the moon. and that whole mission would have been impossible without the invention of the microchip. >> host: where did the phrase t.r. reid "united state of europe" come from >> guest: winston churchill said who was the ex-prime minister of britain. he led their country in the defeat of nazi in victory through world war ii and three weeks later he lost the national election. he was now the post -- the ex-prime minister, and he was a big thinker.

and he was looking at europe. and you could see, you know, the iron curtain had fallen across europe. the nations of europe were spending more money on armies than they were on rebuilding their shattered economies and their shattered cities. and you could see that europe -- europe had already gone to war three times since 1870 and you could see they were going to do it again. those same countries were going to get into another war. and churchill said and several other visionaries -- but he was one of several visionaries we got to stop this. hey, we can't go on. and he said we need to build a new european -- we need to build

a kind of america.g and we need a "united state of europe" and one currency and they have a parliament and a president. they have a lot of the accouterments of a national state. >> host: and your subtitle is "the new superpower and the end of american supremacy." you wrote this in 2004. does that hold true today? >> guest: well, i think the supremacy of the american dollar, the almighty dollar is coming to an end. i think you can see the dollar losing its clout in global markets. and one reason is there's now a competitor to the dollar and that's the european euro. it's been a very, very successful currency. in my book "united state of europe" i have a lot of fun quoting brilliant american experts who say the euro will never work. you know, europeans will never

really give up their francs and their marcs and the lira but it worked. the day the euro came out in -- january, 2002, you could buy one euro for 89 cents. today it would cost $1.35 to buy one euro. it's been the strongest currency in the world. in some ways, europe is the biggest single market in the world without any question. vastly bigger than china. they buy 11 to 12 times as much from us as china does. yeah, in many ways it has this united europe has achieved some level of commercial supremacy in the world. and the europeans make the rules now because of such an important market. the europeans make the rules that govern global commerces. i point out in that book and you go down in the liquor store and

buy a bottle bourbon, that is a quintessential american thing. it's do you think americans clamour to buy their centiliter no that's the europeans who said they want that marketing on every market and because they have the market clout of this united europe, we have to do that. skippy peanut butter tell us how many milliliters in the jar. do you think americans care about that? but europeans do. >> host: what's the importance of may 9th and what is generation e? >> guest: yeah. may 9th is sort of the fourth of july of the "united state of europe". the treaty that brought together the first six countries into a sort of common government.

and it's since grown to 27 countries and about 500 million people. and so the europeans -- they're looking for ways to remind people in germany, in finland, in portugal, in ireland that they all belong to one place. again, they looked over at the united states and they see we all gather on the fourth of july and shoot off fireworks and eat hot dogs and listen to politicians giving long speeches. and so on may 9th, the europeans celebrate europe day all over the place. and they eat hot dogs and they listen to speeches and they have fireworks and concerts and stuff like that. obviously, it's not -- it doesn't have the cultural power of the fourth of july. but it is -- it is their version. and it's a tool for bringing all these 27 different european countries together into a single union. >> host: and generation e?

>> guest: well, generation e i think was -- is in my book about europe. and my argument was that europeans say under 35 or 40 these young europeans are the most united. they are the ones who have the strongest feeling that they are europeans rather than finns or astonians or poles or spaniards if you follow me. if you go up to somebody at 72 and say where are you from, she will say i'm from france or i'm from italy but if you go up to somebody 22 they'll say i'm a european who lives in italy. that was the argument. i think there's a lot of validity in that but it's not as true as i stated in the book. if i were to fix the book, i would downplay the generation e. it turns out these younger citizens of the united europe still feel that they're astonians or finns or dutch.

and the kind of proof of it was when they had the referendum a few years ago on a treaty -- on a european constitution, the rule was it had to pass -- it had to be approved by every country. and it failed in france and in the netherlands. two of the original six countries who formed this united europe. that was kind of surprising. but the really surprising thing for me, the guy who wrote all about generation e is that the younger french and dutch people voted against the constitution more than older people did. do you think -- is it fair to say i was wrong about generation e, yeah, i think that was fair. i was wrong. >> host: and to look at the european-u.s. relations through the eyes of some brits, who are the laudbergers? >> guest: the laudbergers that's a typical american family, peter.

they used to appear on a morning -- a funny morning tv show in britain called "the big breakfast." it was their version of "good morning america" or something. and it would have news. and it would have entertainment news. it was a lot like our morning shows except they also had these skits in which -- in which these two very, very fat people -- they wore michelin man fat suits and they were overweight and holding onto guns. the laudbergers lived in a trailer somewhere -- it sounds like texas. he always had a stetson hat on his head and, of course, they're always wearing american flag t-shirts over their huge fat chests. this is the version they like to think of as america. and the laudbergers -- of course, they're unemployed. on the wall of their trailer they had two pictures. one was george w. bush because

for all of europe he was kind of the epitome of all the problems with america that they could see. and the other person they had was the picture of the woman who sued mcdonald's and won a million dollars because the coffee was too hot, which they all think is classically american. that we're always looking for a way to sue somebody and get rich. so the laudbergers were kind of this comic epitome of all the things that europe loves to hate about america. >> host: in front "confucius lives next door," t.r. reid, you talk about the asian century and the asian miracle. what do you mean by that? >> guest: well, the asian miracle obviously had been an economic term. the asian miracle was the emergence of these poor, and i mean poor east asian nations, to become global economic powers. and the paradigm case as i say

in that book was japan. japan was an incredibly poor country after world war ii. japan was one of the poorest countries in the world. and no resources. no coal, no oil, no steel, nothing. no uranium. they don't even have enough land to grow their own food but the japanese created through hard work -- created the second richest economy in the world. they have a higher per capita income than we do on the small island nation with no resources. so that's considered japan's post-war miracle and it was replicated in other asian countries, taiwan, malaysia, south korea also went from being really poor countries, maybe rating 100 to 150th in the world in per capita income and today those east asian countries rate in the top 10 or 15 in per capita income. that's called the asian economic miracle. we're now seeing it very large in china.

china is having its own economic miracle becoming an export power. in my book, "confucius lives next door," i wrote about a different miracle in asia and east asia which is the social miracle. and here's what that is. that is that those east asian countries, japan, south gsfkore taiwan, et cetera, have about one 100th of the murder rate of the united states. they don't have a lot of robbery. they don't have muggings. you can live your bike out on the street and it doesn't get stolen. they don't even have gafiti. -- graffiti. 1% of babies are born to single mothers. the numbers is 32% in america. very few divorces, et cetera. in other words, in terms of sort of basic social statistics, they're pretty successful. and so i wrote about the asian social miracle and how do you do this? how do you get a country one

100th the murder rate as the united states. that's why i wrote a book about about the asian social miracle. guess what the title gives it away. it's called "confucius lives next door." and my argument is because they inculcate their basic social values so well, socially those countries work pretty well. >> host: welcome to "in depth." this is book tv's monthly series with one author looking at his or her body of work and this month it's t.r. reid, the author of six books in english and three in japanese. he's been a long time "washington post" reporter. he's lived all over the the world. he's covered many topics. we're going to put the numbers up in case you'd like to participate in our conversation with mr. reid.

202 is theary code. -- is the area code. the numbers are listed on the screen. mr. reid is joining us from the mountain time zone in denver. you can also send us an email at book tv@c-span.org or send a tweet twitter.com/booktv and we'll try to get as many of those as possible. here a mr.eid's oks. "confucius lives next door" we talked a little bit. united states of europe. "congressional odyssey." this came from a series of "washington post" that mr. reid wrote back in the late '70s, early '80s. "this is the chip." his most recent "the healing of

america". and my personal favorite, "ski japan!". to look at "the healing of america", what's the bismarck here? >> guest: i tried to figure out why it is that all the other industrialized democracies, countries like this, spend half of us. they're not all socialized medicine. some countries do have big government providing the care and paying the bills but a lot of industrialized democracies cover everybody with private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance. and the paradigm case of that would be germany where the national healthcare system was actually created in 1883otto

bismarck. he created this model of healthcare that's used in a lot of countries, which i in my book call the bismarck model. many economists call it. here's what happens, you go to private doctors. you go to private hospitals. and to pay your medical bills you have a private insurance company. and you split the cost of insurance between the employer and the employee. if you lose your job, then government picks up the slack of the employer and pays that share of the premiums. so 150 million americans are on the bismarck model of health insurance. the reason i emphasize this, it's used in a lot of countries. let's see, germany, switzerland, netherland, france to a degree, japan. and it covers everybody but it's absolutely it's not socialized medicine. in "the healing of america", so couries are less socialized than others.

in switzerland and germany they don't have medicare. people stay with the private insurer cradle to crave in the bismarck model but that's just one of the models of healthcare i found around the world. but i emphasize it in the book because it's not socialized medicine. it's the private sector covering everybody. >> host: and, in fact, from "the healing of america", five common american myths about healthcare systems abroad. it's all socialized medicine out there. they ration care with waiting lists and limited choice. they're wasteful systems run by bloated bureaucracies. health insurance companies have to be cruel. those systems are too foreign to work in the usa. anything you'd like to add to that? >> guest: you know, i think -- those are all myths. that's what we've been told about healthcare overseas. and as i said, it's not true. there's a germ of truth in all that. have you heard these horror stories about long waiting times in canada? they're true.

they have long waiting times for elective care in canada. and to some degree in britain. but many countries, germany, japan, france have shorter waiting times than the u.s. for all medical procedures. and they still cover everybody. and they still spend less. they limit choice. no, sir. no, sir. in france, germany, japan they don't have anything like this in network and out of network or preauthorization that we have. you can go to any doctor, any hospital, any chiropractor, any healer, any lab in the entire country and insurance has to pay the bill. usually within two or three days. so a lot of the stuff we've heard about how healthcare is terrible overseas is not true. >> host: we have an email here, t.r. reid, from homer. my question for t.r. reid is, why has the international comparison been almost completely absent from the political debate over healthcare reform?

>> guest: boy, hey, i wrote a whole book on this topic. what is the answer to that? why don't people realize that the germans have dealt with the same problems we have. they cover everybody. they spend a lot less and they did it in the private sector. as i say, a less socialized system than we have. why aren't we looking at that? it's mysterious to me. i point out in this book that some countries that fairly recently changed their system to get universal coverage. and they looked around the world. the taiwanese set up a committee to look at healthcare systems around the world. same thing i did in my book. in the end taiwan chose the canadian model of healthcare. but it didn't have to. why aren't we looking? i would like to know the answer to that. and i think the answer to that would be, look, healthcare in america is a $2.5 trillion industry. one dollar out of every 6 we

spend we spend on healthcare and that means there are a lot of corporations that are huge winners, that are doing great out of our current system and they're going to resist any change. i think if americans were aware that other countries manage to cover everybody with less waiting and spend less, they might want to change our system to be more like those and the kind of industrial interests making money off our current system don't want people to make that change. >> host: dr. abigail revealed "the healing of america" in september of 2009. she wrote, a chronic shoulder

>> host: and to follow that up from allen from denver, colorado. can you give a brief overview of problems with healthcare access you have experienced throughout your travels? and what are the major things westlake learn from other countries? >> guest: i think -- yeah, i thank you for reading that review in the "times." you know, an author you work forever on these books. i worked years on this book and you throw it out there and you just hope that some reviewer will get it and understand it. and this book has gotten really good reviews. but that review i got in the "new york times," geez, it was marvelous. that woman understood my book. and she understood it was an optimistic book. because i say, we could fix our system. we could cover everybody at reasonable costs with great results. if we were to learn some lessons from other countries.

geez, i'm glad you read that. it's a nice memory to open the "new york times" to find somebody who really understood what i was trying to do. experiences we've had overseas, i've had pretty -- overall, very good healthcare in other countries. but i'll tell you something we found in britain, which i think is a bad idea. in britain they have this national health service. it's free. you're sick. you go to the doctor. they treat you. you pay nothing. there's no co-pay. there's no deductible. there's no premium. you pay taxes and the taxes are high. but it nets but you're not paying any healthcare premium. they pay half as less per capita for healthcare in britain. but they have this rule that the same doctor who treats you in the free national health service can also treat you for pay in the same office, you know, on a different day. and that gives the doctor an incentive to say, oh, gee, if i see you on the nhs it will take three weeks.

i've got a long waiting list and this happened. my family had a knee problem. went into the orthopod and he said it will take me weeks in the nhs but if you come in privately come in saturday and we'll take care of it. i think it's a bad idea. most countries make doctors choose. you can either be in the public system or you can bill privately but britain lets them do both and i always thought that was a mistake. i wouldn't repeat that mistake in america. but i have to say, generally overall, i liked the british system of healthcare. we got good care. we generally didn't have -- most of the time didn't to have wait any longer than we would in the u.s. and it's free. there's no bills. and if there's no bill, then you don't have that three-month fight with the insurance company over who's going to pay the bill. i have to say as a father, a husband, and a patient, i liked the british system. it worked fine. >> host: email from heather did

the demandic of other western countries make it easier for them to establish universal healthcare health insurance. i'm not referring to just racial or ethnic demographics but political economic religious and other differences that exist in the u.s. at a greater level than in other countries? >> guest: it's a very -- it's a valid -- it's a good question. i don't buy that, no. i don't think population diversity makes it any harder to provide universal healthcare. i just can't see why it would. i don't buy that. and anyway, some of the countries that i looked at in my book are more diverse than we may think. i'll give you an example. the netherlands they cover everybody at reasonable cost using private insurance. the netherlands has about 16 million people and a million don't speak dutch. a million of them came within the last 10 or 12 years and

they're mainly north african muslims. they're not christians or dutch-speakers and yet they are covered by the system, too. the system covers everybody. so i think -- i see the question. it's a legitimate question. i don't buy it. i think racially and ethnically and economically diverse populations can -- countries can cover everybody. >> host: t.r. reid, just to kind of rejiger that question a little bit, there's some political problems with the muslim population or ethnic populations in europe now; is that correct? you write about that in "united states of europe"? >> guest: all the countries have a nationalist party like senator tancredo.

i don't think -- i don't think those parties have won an election in any country except there was one in the netherlands where they temporarily won. they won for about six months. but these parties are there. and the coming in of people, particularly, into this new wealthy european union, trying to get jobs and make money has become a source of tension in a lot of european countries. it's always been a source of tension for japan.÷[ just as it is in the united states. i think the striking thing is, when it comes to healthcare, even though illegal immigration is a serious issue in those countries, it has nothing to do with healthcare. if you live in that country and you get sick, they treat you. now, it may be that once you get out of the hospital the justice minister is going to try to kick you out and send you back home. but as long as you're there, they figure everybody should have access to the healthcare system. but you're right, immigration is

of a hot political issue in a lot of european countries. >> host: new york city is our first call for t.r. reid. stan, please go ahead with your question. >> caller: yeah. you've written about the u.s., europe and asia and earlier on you talk about the asian social miracle. in the industrialized countries in east asia have lower rates of social problems of crime and illegitimacies. does this apply to europe and the united states and what could the european social model learn from the asian one? >> guest: there's a really good question. isn't there also a european social model? yes, as a matter of fact there is. and it involves i'd say a stronger reliance on government than we have to provide the kind of basic elements of human life. and most european countries -- well, certainly everybody is covered by the healthcare system. they're not all free. some of them are. but they are much cheaper than

ours and they cover everybody and most european countries, education is free. kindergarten through college. most european countries provide pretty generous retirement pensions provided by the government, things like that. so, yeah, europe, too, has -- the european social model is more commuitarian. it's expensive in tax terms but europeans put up with higher tax rates, you know, the sales tax in sweden is 25% on everything you buy. because they feel they're getting something back from it in this kind of commuitarian set of comfortable benefits pouring out from government including healthcare. so, yeah, i think that's a very good point. that i wrote about the european -- the asian social model but europe also has its own social model.

and in terms of crime, most european countries have lower rates of violent crime than the united states. some of them have pretty high rates of robbery, of car theft. most european countries have pretty much higher rates of illegitimate birth of children born to single mothers than the united states. to some degree that number is a phony number because what's happening in europe now is, you know, they don't go to church that much anymore. people don't have -- stick to traditional religion and, therefore, these young couples live together and have children but never taking the step of getting married. there's lots of couples that we might consider a good faithful couple that are just not married. and, therefore, when the child is born to that couple, look, there's a dad in the home and everything. but it's rated, you know, statistically it's born to a single mother 'cause the parents

weren't married. that's really striking. america is what, 32, 33% children born of single mothers and many in 50% to single mothers. so the statistics don't look as good as east asia but there are explanations for this. >> host: including crown prince hakan of norway -- >> guest: he's living with his partner. many of them are faithful, loving couples who will stay together for a long, long time or forever but they just didn't take the step of getting married and, therefore, when you do these things statistically with the kind of standard statistical model it turns out a lot more babies are born to single mothers but in many cases there is a dad in the home. and they're living like a married couple. >> host: mark in tampa, florida, good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon.

as an admirer of confucius myself i find those differences in crime statistics to be remarkable. my question is, how can america better introduce or increase the values of virtue? >> guest: yeah, i think that's a great question. look, i became0b a huge admirerf confucius. he's one of the greatest teachers in history of ethics and decent conduct. i rate with christ and thomas jefferson and jon stewart mill in teaching how to run a government and how to live with each other. socrates, christ, confucius they're all in that category of great, great human teachers. the striking thing about the confucius teaching may be exotic to americans but a lot of them are not. a lot of them -- a lot of the rules that confucius taught his followers are very familiar to us.

in 500 b.c., in 500 b.c. confucius was asked by one of his students once, can you give me basic rules so that i'm dealing with other people fairly in any situation? and confucius' rule is, do not impose on others which you would not have them impose on you? and in china this is called the golden rule. there's nothing exotic or strange that. one time a student asked confucius -- he's said master, you've been teaching us about ethical conduct and how to deal decently with other people but could you reduce it down to one word and confucius is such a nice go ahead, instead of getting mad about this. he said well, if i had to, i guess i would use -- i'd pick the word compassion and empathy for thinking about what the other person's state is like. that's totally -- that's christian. that's western. that's totally our values. so i argue in this book that

many of the values in these confucius societies, the cultural values are largely the same. and the difference is they have inculcated these values better than we have. they constantly remind people. they put confucius' teachings on the wall of the subway station in tile. and they're there forever. and they put up big signs over the highway let's drive in a friendly manner to watch out for others. stuff like that. they're constantly teaching. they teach in the schools. they teach in the companies so my argument has been, let's do what the confucius countries do, a, let's settle on what our basic cultural values are and i think we know those and b, let's remind each other what they are. >> host: frank gibney reviewed "confucius lives next door" in 1999, this is his review.

>> guest: yeah, you know, that was frank gibney who's a great student of east asia. and he also gave -- he gave that book a good review. that's another good review. authors tend to remember the good reviews. you know, peter, we also remember the bad reviews. i think i can remember every bad review i have got. yeah, he's right. i mean, at the end of the book, "confucius lives next door" where i make this argument that there are cultural explanations for why the asians have these good social statistics. i have a chapter in that book called "what's wrong with the thesis of this book" and i go through all the problems because it's not as simple as i just laid it out for you in a minute or two here. and there are difficulties with

all these. and i think gibney is exactly right. anybody who's lived in japan knows, look, they don't murder each other. they don't steal cars from each other and stuff like that. they don't put graffiti on the wall but, man, some of their politicians and businessmen are as corrupt as anything you will ever see in the west. some of them are really on the take.lx how do i explain this in the context of the confucian social society? and in the end have that book, i say i can't. i don't know why they are so corrupt. he's right. and i did put that in there. the thesis it's a little too simplistic so i wrote a whole chapter. >> host: from "confucius lives next door" the u.s. depicted in asian media is a country where

>> guest: no, that's true. you know, and as we were talking about the laudbergers earlier. the europeans also like to dump on our country. and i think -- i think part of that -- i've always thought part of that is jealous. look, we're big and rich and successful. we're the most innovative country in the world. we're certainly the strongest military country in the world. and it's kind of inevitable that others are going to resent that. and one way they do it is they look for the problems in our society and magnify them. and i used to say in asia and in europe, you know, it is only reason you know about these problems in american society is 'cause we write about them and talk about. we are trying to fix them ourselves. that's how they know.

it's an open society and you can find the warts in our society. and they love writing about them. partly because those problems are there and partly because i think there is some resentment of how successful our country has been in the world. even in countries we've helped there's this kind of resentment of the fact that they had to accept help from the united states. >> host: vince in franklin, tennessee. you're on the air with t.r. reid. >> caller: hey, thank you for c-span. it's always great. i just wanted to make three quick observations and have mr. reid respond. first of all, the homicide rate among blacks and hispanics in the united states, they commit about 84% of the homicides. and whites have a homicide rate about on par with europe. so there's a lot of cultural aspects to that. secondly, on the term per capita income, if you look at the number of hours americans have

to work to provide the necessities and luxuries of life, it is far less hours than anywhere else on the world. so per capita income may say something but when you look at how long americans have to actually work for goods and services, it's far less hours than in the rest of the world. and finally, i would ask mr. reid, which do you think is the greater value, economic freedom or political freedom? and i'll wait his responses. >> guest: yeah, thank you. look, i would -- i want to live in a politically free country where i can say and think what i want to. and i'm allowed to vote and choose my leaders. to me that's the highest measure of freedom in any society. it's got to be there. but i would argue to you that economic freedom and political freedom go together. that is free markets kind of

inevitably lead to free political institutions. if people see they have a choice at the city market then they want a choice at city hall and the person making their laws. i think those go together. i saw this very acutely when i was covering east asia. what happened is south korea is a fabulous example of this. south korea was a military dictatorship. it was an ally of the united states. we always shored up their military dictators. and in 1987, south korea was becoming a rich country. and people poured out in the streets by the millions and demanded free elections. they demanded free elections. and it wasn't just left wing students, you know, these were brokers in 3-piece suits and doctors in their white coats. and they got it. they got it. the military dictator had to step down. and they elected a president. he had been a general but as a matter of fact he ran as a civilian. they gave him one 5-year term

and i always thought the great moment in the history of democracy in south korea was in 1992. i was over there covering it and the president was elected and he was part of these military dictatorships and he said yeah, i'm done. goodbye. have another election and elect another president. it really became a demographic society. with free markets that led them to demand free governing principles and if you think about that model, you got to wonder what's going to happen in china. china has created this hugely successful basically free market capitalist economy but it's still a fascist, a dictatorial communist state imposing rules on the people. and you got to wonder how long people will put up with that. but i would -- among -- given

the choice between those two, i would prefer political freedoms but i think political freedom leads to economic bream. -- freedom. now, the concept that americans work less for our income than other countries, i don't think that's true. no, i don't think that's true. americans are among the hardest working people on earth. i think the japanese, the taiwanese and the chinese work longer hours than we do, but all the european countries work vastly less. in france everybody takes six weeks of vacation in most of europe they take five weeks vacation and they really take them. it's not like in america where you build it up for 30 years in the bank. no. people really take vacation. andgçñ yet their lifestyle is n exactly like ours. their houses aren't as big. but they have a very comfortable upper class -- you know, a middle class lifestyle working vastly shorter, fewer hours than we do.

so the argument that we work less to get the same stuff, no, i don't buy that. in fact, if you go to europe, people always ask you, why do you work so hard? why do you americans work so hard? and no wonder your rate of heart attack and cardiovascular disease is so hard. you're under total stress. you're working all the time. that's what they say. i don't accept your suggestion that we make as much money by working less. we make more money than other countries but we also work harder. >> host: this is book tv's "in depth." our guest is author t.r. reid. the next call for him comes from billingham, washington, good morning. >> caller: good morning. my question is do you believe the united states of europe could progress into a united states of south america, united states of africa, united states of asia, et cetera? and then from that point on into a world government where the countries becoming states and then counties within those

states based on our form of government? i personally believe that does it bring world peace and bring about equality and trade, environmental control and living standards throughout the world? >> host: mr. reid? >> guest: yeah, well, william, the europeans totally agree with you. they think this new model, the european union of the united states of europe is the model for the modern world for countries to live together despite their differences and not go to war. that's the reason they created the european union was that they didn't get into another world war. they already had two of them in one century. and it's worked. i mean, the countries of europe are not going to go to war with each other. they're too united now. they're too interconnected. and so the europeans feel they created a model for other parts of the world, the mideast is the one they always talk about. when i was in -- i once went to a7ñ seminar at oxford universit

about exporting the european union model. and they were talking, you know -- they liked the term "the united states of europe" that resonates of people and they wanted to have a united states of america and i don't mean our country, north america, but, you know, canada to chile. they wanted to have a single american union. and they were actually talking about that we would accept an american-wide currency called the peso. can you imagine americans giving up their dollar to spend pesos? i don't think it's likely to happen but the europeans really like this idea. that in other parts of the world, and particularly other parts of the world with a lot of tension and a history of warfare, the european union model could work. and whatever you say about it has definitely worked in europe. they've now go 70 years without a war. and they're not going to have a war in the mainland of europe anymore.m[ñ

>> host: and, in fact, in the united states of europe, t.r. reid spends quite a bit of time january 1st, 2002, the conversion of the euro. here's a tweet that we got from jamie crist. how stable can the euro be about it covers countries like germany and greece? >> guest: yeah, that's a very good question. when you create a currency union, that is when different countries or states share a single currency there's something called a credible currency union. that is are the countries closer together in government terms and in economic terms that you can have a single currency. and this question is being challenged right now in europe. it's an argument that greece never should have been admitted to the euro in the first place because it never met the basic tests that europe set for a healthy economy to be in the euro. but the answer to that is, look,

there are huge differences. there are huge economic differences between oregon and alabama. and there are many times when alabama or arkansas has a 10, 11, 12% -- or michigan, for example, 12% uninsurance rate and other states have a 5 or 6% unemployment rate, i'm sorry. michigan is 12% unemployment. colorado is about 7%. other states are at 5% and yet we all use the dollar and we kind of absorb these changes. and this is the problems facing greece, portugal, and to some extent spain right now it creates the same kind of challenge for the euro. my bet is the euro is going to survive. and the reason the euro is going to survive is the rich countries of europe, germany, france, et cetera, belgium want to see the

euro survive, they will do it to keep it alive. >> host: bill from washington, you're on with t.r. reid? >> caller: hi, mr. reid. i've enjoyed your analysis today. going back in your "the healing of america" you go over how miserable we do have it here in this country for how long we've had it. and we've come up to the point where -- you know, even in this crisis, you know, fiscally and healthcare wise, the government still can't come to a plan that's obviously the best -- the universal system. we shouldn't be arguing, you know, what is there. in these bills right now. we should be arguing which type of system should we be going through morally fiscally it is the best system right now. even when the majority of americans support it, we still can't get our government to do it. so do you think this story -- when we look back in the history books we're going to see that this story is about -- and you came up just short in your first answer today in the email.

will this story be about really the corruption in government that prevented this from happening, the obvious even in a crisis situation, even when the majority of americans support it? will the story be about the corruption in the american government, you know, the type of corruption that, you know, we only apportion to third world dictatorships? >> host: mr. reid? >> guest: look, i'm convinced -- i'm 100% convinced we're going to get to universal coverage. to me the goal of a healthcare system should be universal coverage at reasonable cost. i know we could get there. come on. all the other countries have done it, as i say, all the time. if france can do this, the united states of america can do it. i know we could. and i think we will. i think the american people eventually will demand that we cover everybody. i argue in my new book, "the healing of america" -- i argue that if americans knew how cruel our system was, we'd fix it. i don't think americans want to live in a country where 20 to

25,000 of our neighbors die every year of treatable diseases because they can't afford to see a doctor. and this happens in the richest country in the world. the national academy of sciences did the big study on this. i think it's very clear. nobody disputes these data. do you think americans want to live in a country where 800,000 of us go bankrupt every year, lose everything we've ever saved just because we happen to get sick or got hit by a car or something? it doesn't happen in other countries. nobody in britain goes bankrupt for medical bills. france, zero. germany, zer. belgium, zero. japan, zer. -- zero. it doesn't have to be. and i think if americans knew if we were the only rich country allowing this kind of cruelty and whim to dictate our daily lives, we'd fix it. i think we would. so i'm totally confident that we will demand and get to universal coverage at reasonable cost. i don't think we're going to do it this year. but i think americans eventually will do it. and one of the reasons i wrote

the book was to say, hey, it's not as hard as you may think. a lot of other countries have gotten there. and we could too if we were willing to open our eyes and take some lessons from other countries. >> host: okay. we've gotten about 20 emails in the last 10 minutes asking for your assessment of the current healthcare debate and the current bill and president obama's involvement. >> guest: well, the bill is pending right now. look, it's better than what we've got now. it would -- it would outlaw some of the most reprehensible practices of the american insurance industry. it would get more people covered, which is what the insurers need if they're going to stop these awful practices. and it does have some level of cost control. it doesn't go far enough by my standards. i think the goal should be universal coverage at reasonable cost. and our bill covers a lot more

people in 2019 it would still leave 20 million americans without insurance coverage. and it doesn't have enough control on cost to get us down to a reasonable level. but definitely better than what we've got now. so in that regard, it's a desirable bill. i think -- i've been pretty critical of the obama people. i don't think they've done a good job of selling their bill. as a matter of fact, if you look at american attitudes since last july, every month the percentage of people supporting obama-care or the obama the democrats bill in washington has gone down. it's now as the republicans keep pointing out it's a minority of people support the bill. most people are against it. so i don't think they've done a good job of pointing out the difficulty in our current system of point out what could be done. but i think the current -- the current bill is definitely better. it doesn't get us far enough. i think -- people ask me all the time.

i think it's likely that we will get to universal coverage in america state-by-state. and in my book, i talk about some countries where universal coverage started on a regional basis and then the other provinces or states or regions saw that it worked and adopted it. and i think that could happen in america. if we, you know, just as lewis brandeis of the supreme court always said the state should be the laboratories for policy experimentation. i think if five or six or eight states tried to find ways to cover everybody and two or three of them make it work, then the rest of us can copy. i think that's probably the model we're going to get to, use to get to universal coverage because i think what we've learned this year is the interests making big money off our current system are too strong. are so strong that they're able to prevent really comprehensive change in washington.

... >> guest: who understand the point that providing universal health care coverage is a moral obligation for a rich society. that's the main point of my book, and people get it. and we could do it. so that feels really good. it's very nice to have that book selling so well and having people read it and talk about it. but it's not my bestseller. here, i'll show you, peter.

here's the best selling book i ever wrote. of course, as every american can see, this is, of course, the famous book seiko part ii, the formula of success. this book has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, about half a million in japan and china. it's also a best seller in china, amazingly, and you know what? has nothing to do with me. yes, i'm the co-author of this book. it says right here, i don't know if you can see this, i'm the author. and they do have me -- can you see that? in the back flap, that's the author of the book. but really the reason this book has been so successful for me is the illustrator. that's this guy. he's a famous, famous mongol artist in japan. he writes these graphic novels

and is really famous, and this is his most famous character, section chief shima is one of the most famous in japan. he's fictional, but he's a section chief at a big electronics company, and i, i feel that the graphic novel, the comic books about this corporate executive, i always thought were a fantastic window into japanese life and japanese corporate life and japanese society, so i always, i read this every week. it's a weekly serial. and i started writing about it for "the washington post" about how great, what a great insight it is. so here in this book, here's the section chief shima, and here's reid. so the author, the artist, came to me and said let's do a book together which is this book. and if you're smart enough to write a book illustrated by him,

you're going to sell a lot of books in japan. that was my secret. and now, as i say, it still sells every year like crazy in china. so this book here, the formula for success was my formula for success. this is my best selling book. but in english, yeah, "the healing of america" has been my best seller. i thank everybody out there who bought it, and for those who didn't buy it, let's see, it's march, let me just say that st. patrick's day is coming up. great st. patrick's day giving kind of thing. but, yeah, the book has done really, really well but it's not yet my personal best seller. >> host: is it as profitable to publish in japan as it is in the u.s.? >> guest: the royalty rate is a little lower. in america i get about 15% of the retail price of every copy, and in japan the royalty rate was lower.

they publish the books much faster. in america you turn in the manuscript, and it takes nine, ten, eleven months before the book's on the shelves. and all my books in japan were out in two months or three months, so if you were really grinding them out, you can do them fastener japan. >> host: why is that, do you think? >> guest: i've done quite well with my japanese books. >> host: why do you think the turn around is faster in japan? >> guest: they're efficient people. i don't know. [laughter] once they put their mind p to doing something, they do a good job of it, and they do it pretty fast. i think that's the explanation. >> host: dominic, please, go ahead with your question for t.r. reid. >> caller: thank you, sir. mr. reid, i've been very impressed. i wrote a book with affinity publishers titled "general patton's dark secret." i fought underneath general patton in world war ii, and it's great you mention book sales.

you know what? the only books i've sold are the 23 copies that i bought? [laughter] i sent one to "the washington post" to -- >> host: dominic, was this self-published? >> caller: yes, sir. and. >> host: and what's your question for t.r. reid? >> caller: mr. reid, i'd like to know since he's bringing up the european euro, what are the ramifications, i mean, wouldn't you think they need a central government like, like, for instance, would you consider if we have 50 states, the government -- each state has its own separate government. but the government in d.c. would be considered the central government. so what are we supposed to do, like, if -- >> host: well, thank you, dominic. t.r. reid -- >> guest: yeah, that's a good question. can you make a currency work when it's used by 16 countries, each with their own independent national government?

well, that's what the euro is going to test, is it a real current si union? one way they've dealt with this is they have a central bank just like we have the federal reserve, they have the european central bank which sets the interest rates for all the euro member countries. and so to some extent they have a kind of common government that a currency needs. but as we see, they're being tested. they have the a currency crisis right now in europe that will test whether they really have a genuine currency union over there. but i just want to point out the euro has dropped this year or in the last three months from about $1.50, it costs $1.50 to buy one euro, now it only costs about $1.30. but still in 2002 it only cost .89, so it's still a much, much stronger currency than ours is and that's why i think, yes, it will survive this current

strain. >> host: mr. reid, you talk in the u.s. of europe about brussels and the fact that the euro court system can overrule individual country's court systems. do you foresee a day when brussels becomes a washington, d.c. to the u.s. of europe? >> guest: yes. i think over time that central government is going to get stronger. it's probably not going to go as fast as you might think if you read my book, "the united states of europe," because i was maybe a little too optimistic for what was going to happen if on optimism's the right word. but, no, i think that's definitely going to happen. when i lived in britain, one night this kind of news flash came out that the european court of human rights in brussels, no, in the hague, i'm sorry, in the netherlands had ordered the british army to accept homosexuals. it was a violation of human rights in europe not to let

homosexuals join your army, and, you know, if some foreign court tried to order our army to do anything, i think we would all rebel, we'd go crazy. but, no, what happened is the next morning the head of the british military said, okay, we'll accept gays. we've been told to do it, and we'll do it. so as long as people are willing to accept the authority asserted by those european institutions, they'll have authority. and they've done pretty well. there are some areas where they don't get any clout, but in my book i write about the huge areas of daily life that are now governed by brussels in every country. i have a chapter in my book about the metric martyr, this green goeser in the north of england, and he was jailed because he sold bananas by the pound, and by european law you can only sell fruit by the kilo, right? not by the pound. they also, remember this, in the

book the european union has also issued a decree on the maximum curve of a banana. it's got to be a fairly straight piece of fruit in europe, that kind of power. so they have that kind of clout, and as long as people accept the authority and go along with it, which they're doing, i think that that government is going to get stronger and stronger, yeah. >> host: jay in asheville, north carolina. good afternoon, you're on with. the r. reid on booktv. >> caller: yes, thanks for taking my call. my question to mr. reid is this, i have read about the declining natural populations of european countries, in particular it seems to be acute russia. in russia. a million russians disappear, and their birthrate is declining. the only european country that has a sustainable birthrate is muslim albania. and my question to you, sir, is

do any of the political leaders in france, germany, europe, finland, norway, do they take these declines in their natural birthrate seriously? i mean, you mentioned about a million immigrants coming into holland that don't speak dutch. i was just wondering in, in your view dud the political leadership in europe regard these declining natural birthrates as a potential serious problem? >> guest: yeah. this is considered to be a public issue in every country. i don't think it's as bad as you just stated. many countries in europe still have a sustainable birthrate that increases the population. britain is over two per woman, and that meets the number. italy, i think, has the lowest or second lowest birthrate in the world, and many of those countries have declining birthrates, that's absolutely

right. and governments are worried about it. you need young workers, and particularly in that tax-heavy, you know, welfare-heavy system. you need young workers to pay the taxes to support the welfare base. and they are coming up with various ways to do it. they do it just through encouragement. oh, look, this famous beloved movie star just had her fourth child, why don't you, kind of thing. the french offer economic incentives, money, for people to have more children, and it appears to have worked. since the french instituted that, the birthrate has been increasing at a significant rate. the japanese are also trying that because they are below sustainable level of birth. so, yeah, all the countries are worried about it. i don't think the situation's quite as bad as you said. but i think a point you make is a good one, a lot of those newborn european babies being born in the 21st century are

being born no emigrant mothers. fine. that's fine. so what? that's what's happening in the united states. so, you know, as long as you send those kids to the school in your country and teach them to be french or spaniards or dutch or norwegians, fine. they'll come out fine. but it is considered to be an issue and many countries are struggling with ways to increase the birthrate. >> host: arlene, san francisco. you're on the air. >> caller: oh, hi, t.r. reid. i loved your book, "the healing of america." i'm a nurse, and i've read a lot of books, but this is the best one. >> guest: you're great, thanks. >> caller: i really like that especially the part where you talked about how the european health care systems that are private are nonprofit and how amazed they were that americans have a for-profit private health care system. why do you think most americans don't realize that our private

health care system is primarily in business to make a profit for their stockholders? >> guest: yeah, that's a good question. you're talking here about the insurance side of things because a lot of european countries and japan, for example, and canada have private doctors and private hospitals. and the providers, those are providers of care like you, often are allowed, generally are allowed to make a profit. japan has more for-profit hospitals than the united states. it's the insurance side of the thing thes, it's the payment side that all the other countries have decided has to be nonprofit. and the reason is they just think there's a basic conflict between paying for people's health care and paying monthly or quarterly dividend to investors like american insurance companies do because if you're an insurance, health insurance company and you have to pay a dividend to your investors every quarter, well, then you invent schemes not to

pay the bills. that's how hay came up with this pre-existing -- they came up with this pre-existing condition. if you've ever been sick, they might not want to cover you. they can't pay a dividend to their investors and make a profit. ditto they have these lifetime cutoffs where you're in the hospital sick with cancer, and they send you a letter saying, sorry, we'll never send you another penny. the other countries have decided that that is a fundamental conflict, so they're not allowed, insurance companies are not allowed to make a profit on selling the basic package of health insurance. and that's worked fine. the insurance companies, of course they squabbled about it and complained about it at first, but they put up with it, and they're doing okay. i think americans realize full well that our health insurance companies, most of them, make very, very good profits. basically, you know, when they deny your claim, the reason they did it was to enhance profit and raise the price of their stock.

that's why they're denying claims. and the result is customers tend to loathe their health insurance company because all you do is get a bunch of letters in the mail saying no, but wall street loves the health insurance companies because of the very practices that make us customers hate them. so the other countries have all decided that can't work, and they've taken the profit out of health insurance. and, you know, people say to me, people who have read my book like you, and i thank you for it, say, god, how could that work? i don't get it, how could insurance be nonprofit? hey, health insurance in the united states was nonprofit for the first 50 years that the product existed. blue cross and blue shields were started as nonprofits in every state to help people pay their medical bills, and it was only in the late '70s and '80s that these big national insurance giants started buying up the nonprofit blue cross and blue shields and shifting them to profit. and that's when they started

this business of we won't cover you if you've ever been sick, we're only going to pay so much per year, and, you know, the insurance companies to enhance their profit, to enhance their profit they have this horrible system called rescission. i don't know if you know about rescission, but what happens is you sign up for health insurance, they send you a letter -- we made a movie about this -- they send a letter saying, congratulations, you're covered by wellpoint insurance company, a great insurer. you pay your premiums every month and then you get hit by a truck or get breast cancer and they write you a letter saying, sorry, you're not covered. they do it to tens of thousands of americans every year. i don't think an insurance company would try to do it in other countries because they're not there for profit. their mission in life is to pay people's medical bills, and that is really a fundamental distinction between the united states and other countries, and it's one of the major reasons that our health care system

isn't working. >> host: jodi tom tweets in, i'm going to buy t.r.'s book and when i'm finished, i'll donate it to the public library. we need to see beyond partisan politics! next call from buffalo, new york. shirley, hi. >> caller: hi. thank you for a terrific discussion. my question is this, do europe and the asian nations that you mentioned have the same rampant problem with illicit drug use, particularly heroin and cocaine, that we have here in the united states? and to what extent might that be a contributing factor to societal problems? >> host: mr. reid? >> guest: yeah, that's a very good question, yeah. so the european countries all have problems with drugs, and there, too, they've dealt with this problem in a different way. for the most part, they have a lot of drugs coming in from africa and east asia coming

right across the med into these european countries. but for the most part they don't treat these as criminal problems. they treat it as a health issue. they've basically decriminalized drug use, and if you have a drug problem, if you're an addict, they take you to a hospital. they take you to a treatment center and try to get you off it in a medical setting rather than prison. the country that really pioneered this, we all know about the netherlands where you literally can go into a coffee shop and buy marijuana, but the country that pioneered the overall decriminalization of drugs was portugal. and my family and i went there. it's a great country. and i did a story about how this worked. and the drug minister, the justice minister of portugal said to me, here was the problem, we would jail these people for cocaine use, and while they were in prison they

switched to heroin. i mean, it was hard to keep drugs out of the prison which has also been true in the united states. so they decriminalized it and made it a medical issue. but it's a very good point. other countries have drug abuse with problems, and they cause social problems for all countries. the countries that have fewer problems are in east asia. japan has a minimal problem. of course, it's an island nation. south korea has much lower drug problems than we do. i don't know enough about china to tell you whether they have drug problems or not. they, i guess they've been stricter, and he was sort of a stronger thumb on things, i don't know, but it's a good point. the european countries have worried about drug problems. they have problems similar to ours. they've just responded differently to the issue. >> host: marnie, west hollywood, california. please go ahead with your question for t.r. reid on

booktv. >> caller: yes, thank you so much for taking my call. speaking of obamacare, mr. reid, and this is so interesting. i've recorded your program. >> guest: thanks. >> caller: that is simply legislating decency, and it's not reform. but my question revolves around universal health care. this may be in your book, and i've watching it all and listening as carefully as i could to all of this for quite a while now, and i'm not, i don't understand why no one has brought up universal health care in relation to the gross national product? meaning that social morale, i know studies have been done by corporations and companies regarding their employees and productivity and how it is increased with showing concern for the employee and support, but just the social morale, an affirmed social worth;

minimizing anxiety, enhance security and how that social morale increases productivity. >> host: mr. reid, any response for marnie? >> guest: no, i'm with you on that all the way, i think you're absolutely right. if you cover everybody, there are all sorts of economic benefits to accrue to a nation that provides universal health care coverage, and the guy who figured this out initially was the guy who created the first national health care system, business mark. as i said, the first chancellor of germany. he was, he was a conservative, we'd call a republican. he was a low-tax, pro-business kind of government guy. and yet he creates this national health care system, and some of the members of his party said, what are you doing, what are you doing? he said, no, no, we need a healthy work force. if we're going to be a productive society and outproduce the british, the english and during the industrial revolution, we need a healthy work force.

and if we're going to be the dominant military power, we need healthy young people to serve in our military. in other words, there are important national economic reasons to keep people's health in good shape. and, of course, as i think my book demonstrates without question, i don't think there's any doubt about this, universal health care coverage saves money. can i say that again? universal coverage is cheaper. you spend less per capita on health care if you cover everybody. you want proof? go to any of the ten nations i went to in my book. every one of them covers everybody. they spend about half as much per capita, and generally in many cases they have better health statistics than we do. so they're getting better results for less money because, because they cover everybody. it's not a coincidence that countries with universal coverage have lower costs per capita. it's not a coincidence. it's a function of universal

coverage. and, believe me, you know, members of congress have read my book. they call me up, which is quite nice, but they don't seem to get this point. if you want to cut the cost of health care, cover everybody. it's worked in every other country, it would work here. so, yeah, i completely agree with you in terms of productivity, in terms of overall cost we would be well, much better off economically with universal coverage. plus there's a huge competitive disadvantage for american manufactures. we're in a globally-competitive market here, and yet our manufacturers are paying vastly more for health care to keep their workers healthy than any of our competitors. if we covered everybody, we'd cut those costs. can i just ask you, how come nobody in the congress gets this? why can't i get this point across? i mean, i have briefed congressional committees. i went to a briefing in florida and briefed a dozen members of congress, and they listen politely and say, that's so

interesting, but you can tell they don't belief it. it's true. universal coverage reduces cost. >> host: carlos talf rest e-mails in, one of the criticisms in the u.s. of the european social democratic model is that this communetarian approach you describe with generous benefits, free education, other government services along with high taxes inhibits the entrepreneurial spirit that has been one of the cultural landmarks of american society. is there any validity to this criticism? >> guest: that makes sense to me. it would make sense to me that high taxes and kind of omnipresent government would limit innovation, but as a matter of fact, i'm not sure it's borne out in practice. for example, do you have a cell phone? you know, cell phone is an american invention, great device, and we, one of our great industrial champions, motorola, used to be the world's biggest

seller of cell phones. this was a market that america owns and guess what? a finnish company, a european company called nokia came along and now has twice the market share of any american company. they own that market. because they were innovative, because they were productive. our biggest exporter, the biggest exporter in the united states is boeing, this maker of huge jet planes, but boeing has been outsold for the last six years by a european company called airbus. so, yeah, you could make the case that those high taxes and those kind of government presence everywhere limits innovation, but in the markets just ask boeing if they're having trouble competing gwen those lazy socialists in europe. the answer is, yes. they've been outsold by airbus. you know, as i always point out it was the third biggest german,

auto company, mercedes, that bought chrysler, the third biggest american auto company. it wasn't the other way around. it wasn't us buying them, it was them buying us. so i absolutely see the suggestion, in this oppressive government and high taxes is, must be a terrible burden on innovation, but it's not. they're pretty innovative. i mean, even in the drug industry study recently in the american journal health affairs looking at where major blockbuster drugs came from and more of them came from europe and japan than came from the united states. a lot came from the united states. we're a very innovative country, but those countries are doing well, too, and, of course, the drug industry's greatest achievement ever at least if you watch the tv ads, viagra, was invented in britain. >> host: as a side note, t.r. reid mentioned the cell phone being invented in america.

if you're interested in meeting the inventer, go to c-span.org or our communicators site. recently we interviewed marty cooper who is the inventer of the cell phone. ed, ogden, utah, you're on with t.r. reid. please, go ahead. >> caller: hello. i have a couple comments. when they talk about this health care, it needs all the laws that congress makes, it needs to apply to all people, not just a few. the second comment is i thought that when congress, i thought the congress represented the people, not the party. and -- >> host: what does that mean, ed? >> caller: well, we have, we bicker about the republicans, democrats, and then we say it's nonpartisan. well, partisan, my foot. i don't disagree that we have different points of view, but i think that they represent the public, and when they represent the party, they're not representing all of us. they're only representing a few of us.

>> host: mr. reid? >> guest: yeah, i don't buy that. people have aligned into political parties, and the political parties have tens of millions of followers, and people join political parties because they basically share political and philosophical mindset with the representatives from that party. i don't think belonging to a party gets in the way of serving the people. i don't accept that. you say that congress should pass laws that apply to everybody. i would urge that in health care. that's certainly been the case in other countries. in fact, i think we were asked earlier what's the biggest difference between the u.s. and other countries? the biggest difference is the other wealthy democracies that i went to for my be book, all of them first made the moral commitment to cover everybody. they first said, dog gone it, we're a rich country, we want everybody in this our country to have health care when they need it. we don't want anybody dying for

or lack of a doctor, we don't want anybody going bankrupt because of medical bills. they first made that commitment. once you commit to do that, you can design a system that will cover everybody because all the other countries have done so. and the argument in my book is because we've never had that conversation, because we've never made that moral judgment that we need to cover everybody, our debate always gets distracted on to things like insurance company reimbursement rates or, you know, the procedural fee scale going to doctors. we get distracted into that stuff, and we lose sight of the real goal which ought to be, in my view, universal coverage at reasonable cost. i think if we focused on that like all the other rich countries did, we could do it. we're americans. we could do this. >> host: we have about an hour and a half left with our guest, t.r. reid, who is currently in denver. mr. reid, why do you live in denver? >> guest: i had the very good

fortune, what was it, 38 years ago to marry a coloradoan, and peggy is a very loyal colorado native. you know, we lived around the world and after every country, peggy said, let's go home. and we're home. i feel now, this is a controversial statement in my family, but i'm a coloradoan. doggone it, i chose to come here as an adult, i should get more points than somebody who just happened to be born here. i love our beautiful state. we love the hiking and the skiing and the fishing and the biking and the really friendly feel of people in our wide open western state. the great snow and the sun glistening on the snow, i'm delighted to, i'm so lucky that i married a coloradoan. we now live, i would say, about 4 miles from peggy's girlhood home, and i hope that's close enough. >> host: okay. well, we're going to take a short break.

we visited t.r. reid in his home, and we saw his office and where he writes, and he talks a little bit about that. that's three or four minutes, and then we'll be back with live calls. but first, mr. reid, i want you to ponder this e-mail that we got from joan worely. this is something for you to think about during these three or four minutes. i've read your books, i've seen you many times on tv, i used to enjoy your bits and pieces on npr and now looking forward to in depth. question, remember the composite best person, most athletic that yearbooks and such invented in high school? well, please, tell us your composite country filling in the same blanks. best health care, best transportation, conservation, educational system, care of old folks, support of the arts, frenziliest -- frenziliest people, best food. something for you to think about, and we'll be back live with t.r. reid in just a few

minutes. >> so this kind of living room area here is actually my office, and for many years this was the rocky mountain bureau of the washington post. of course, that doesn't exist anymore. newspapers can't afford bureaus anymore, but when there was one, i was it, and this was the location of "the washington post" in denver. and like every office we've ever had, we have this wall of our kids which arrive always had everywhere. these i think we got at the colorado state fair about 20 years ago or so when the kids were pretty little. and then this door -- [laughter] this old door is my desk. it's on a couple of file cabinets. and then over here are my is where i keep my records. so here's what i do. whenever i start a new book, i buy a file cabinet. and then you start gathering stuff, and there's one folder in the file cabinet, and here's "the healing of america." the whole thing is just jammed.

i can't even get it all in, this is overflow. that's what comes when you write a book. you just gather lots and lots and lots of information. so anybody who complains that my book is too long, hey, it could have been much longer if i'd thrown all that stuff in there. so this is where i write my books. and you know what? it's hard work. i try really hard to write them in a chatty, friendly way. i throw jokes in there, you know, puns and stuff. but it turns out to be very hard to make a book look easy. it's hard work. and the nice thing is when we lived in japan, although we had a pretty big house by japanese standards, it was the smallest house our family had ever lived in. and i had to do my writing in one corner of a room where we ate and watched tv, and the kids played, where everything happened. my kids came to realize how hard of work it is to write a book. it's really hard. while i was writing this book, i

made a film for pbs front line about this ancient form of hindu medicine in india. this is relatively small number for a hindu god. he's the hindu god of healing, and i put dan dhanwanthari up there. over here is a banner i got at a pro-national health service rally in britain. i love the nhs. you can't see this, but this is a very funny chart about how screwed up and messed up the american health care system is, it's ridiculous. the problem in our life is too many books, and we've moved around the world, and we haul all these books. and for a while i was throwing away books or giving away books. i had too many books. they don't all fit here. so i was giving away books.

and then i went to visit a friend of mine that lives in a beautiful house in princeton, new jersey, and he just had this in every room of the house, every room of his house was all books and shelfs, so i stopped giving away books and throwing them away. i'm just going to shelve them all from now on, is what i'm going to do. i like foreign languages, my mom was german, and so i grew up with a little bit of german. then i got into latin and greek. and then later in life i got into chinese and japanese. and this will amazology u -- amaze you, but as a matter of fact, knowing latin really helped me learn japanese. they're completely different languages, but the romans were engineers, it's such a well-structured language, it helps you learn anything. so here are all these japanese books of mine. sthis is my so-called leisure reading.

it's not very leisurely. i'm trying to read the tale of gengi, this is the great japanese epic written in 1000 a.d.. so i'm reading this translation of it that was done for japanese middle schoolers and high schoolers and even still i have to look up, like, every word. can you see that? so i'm reading the book just when i get stuck i have this very good translation here that i have to dig through to find out. here i have the actual original text of gengi, just in case i want to know how it was really written before the guy simplified it for japanese teenagers. and then here's the magic tool. this is, this is an electronic dictionary. this has five books in it. it has a japanese-english dictionary, a japanese-japanese dictionary, a japanese history

encyclopedia and a dictionary of 5,000 chinese characters. so they're all in here. i have many more books on my lap. i've got work for this -- if it weren't for this fabulous dictionary here. you can just write the word here, and it looks it up for you. see, i found it right there, and instead of having to look it up the normal way in a japanese dictionary you just write the two characters here, and there they are. so this is such a great tool. really changed my life for the better. buck. ♪

>> host: and we are back live with t.r. reid who is in denver near his home. this is booktv's "in depth." we're going to continue to take your calls, e-mails and tweets. let's put the numbers up, 202-737-0001 in the east and central time zones, mountain and pacific, 202-737-0002 is the number for you to call. book the at d booktv@cspan.org

if you want to send an e-mail for t.r. reid. we left off with joan worley and her e-mail about the best composite countries from all the places you've lived. health care. >> guest: well, for health care i think any country that commits to coffer everybody -- cover everybody meets my test for best. and the important thing, the message of my book is if the goal is universal coverage at reasonable costs, it turns out there are a lot of roots to that -- routes to that destination. so our family lived in japan and britain. they are quite different systems. in britain everything is paid for by the government, worked fine. but in japan the docs, the hospitals, the insurance is private. that worked fine too. the important thing in health care is any country that covers everybody, and there are, you know, most of the rich countries do that so i have to put 'em all on that scale.

>> host: best transportation. >> guest: well, the best mass transit i've seen is japan with probably the netherlands a close second. the japanese, you know, they're big car makers, they're the biggest car maker in the world, and they love cars. they have more cars per capita than we do. of. [laughter] it's a crowded country, you know? they don't use their cars much. they do everything by mass transit. they use the car for the weekend trip up to the hills or something, basically. so you know what the japanese have done? they have the problem, people, in the morning everybody in tokyo or in the big cities walks to the train or subway to take the train to work, and a lot of people ride their bike. and so outside the train stations or the subway stations there will be 8, 10,000 bicycles, and they just totally cover the sidewalk. you can't get around them. it's a big with issue in japan, is bicycle contagion.

there are just too many. so, you know, the japanese, they're pretty innovative people, so here's what they've invented. this is amazing to me. at the subway station there is this kind of very narrow skyscraper, just like a toaster on its side. a very narrow building. you couldn't even walk in the door, and it has a little slit. you push a button, and they open, the slot opens, and this metal arm comes out and grabs the front wheel of your bicycle and yanks it away, and then it bose up nine stories, and they store your bicycle somewhere. flrve and after work you come back, and you punch in your number, and in about 12 seconds, boom, out comes the metal arm are your bicycle. in other words, they found a way to deal with this contagion so that people can still ride the book to mass transit. the netherlands i just think is such a great integrated system.

you get off the plane in amsterdam, and there's a train to anywhere in europe. you know, you just walk down the hallway, and it's there. so i'd say transportation netherlands, france and germany, they have those great high-speed trains. but japan is the best. >> host: conservation. >> guest: conservation of national resources? >> host: yes, sir. >> guest: i would guess the united states is because we have these very strong requirements. if you cut down an acre of trees, you have to plant an acre of trees. other countries don't have that. i'm sure we have more protected wilderness area than any country, and we certainly have the best national parks i've ever been to, so i'm going to vote u.s. best conservation. >> host: education. educational system. >> guest: well, we have such a great democratic educational system in which everybody is entitled to as good a education as we can give them. i think that it's pretty good. the japanese system, of course,

is famous for training kids particularly at science and engineering. japan and china have this incredibly complicated writing system with thousands of different letters, chinese characters, you know, japan and china use them. and japan is about 99% literacy and even china is over 80% literacy with this very complicated system, so they're doing something, they're doing something right about teaching literacy in a very complicated reading system. >> host: okay. just a couple more. old folks and the arts. >> guest: yeah, old folks. well, of course, those confucian countries really revere the elderly, and they basically have an obligation on the family to care for older people in the family. and so life is pretty good for seniors in those confucian countries.

but i think the united states does a good job of taking care of our seniors. i mean, we don't provide health care to everybody, but we do have medicare for all our seniors. we don't provide pensions for everybody, but, you know, government help for everybody who's poor, but seniors do get social security, so i think the u.s. has also done a good job of respecting and caring for our elderly. >> host: and the arts. >> guest: no, the u.s. is the most vibrant arts scene in the world. let's see, in literature, in visual arts, in the movie and tv, in music. it's hard to imagine a country that can match us. i mean, you go to any other country and everybody is walking down the street with the newest model nikes on their feet and a cup of starbucks and an ipod playing, you know, 50 cent or beyonce or black eyed peas or

something. to me the u.s. is the trend setter for popular art and fine arts around the world. and, you know, just tonight billions of people around the world are going to watch the oscars. and i can tell you from having lived in europe, as soon as americans win all the oscars, the european newspapers are going to complain, they ignored us. those rats, how could they do that? they always do that. >> host: and two more. friendliest people and best food. >> guest: friendliest people is definitely the united states, and i think one of the striking things about living overseas or one of the reasons i thought our family enjoyed living overseas is it makes you a better american. if you live in other countries, you have a better appreciation for the things we do right, the way we kind of take in everybody from all over the world and give everybody pretty much an equal chance to succeed. that, that's so american. but i just think the casual

friendliness of americans is unparalleled in the world. we've made very good friends in other countries, believe me, and the japanese -- and the brits, too, for that matter -- they really work at friendship. once they figure out they're going to be your friend, they call you up, they ask you out. they really work at it. the way you can sort of meet somebody at the ball game in north america or get chatting in the elevator, that casual warmth, that kind of expectation that we're equal people here, and we can get along, that's, to me, thoroughly american. friendliest people in the world, americans. >> host: and food. >> guest: the best food in the world. well, we've got it all, is the thing. the best food in the world, that's tough to say. america has everything. it's kind of hard to peat a steak and baked potatoeses or -- but we've, you know, a really

good hunk of homemade apple pie is very hard to beat anywhere in the world, but i've had great food everywhere. can they, can i add one more candidate to best? >> host: sure. >> guest: i think the best, best scenery i would rate as nepal. it's just an amazing country. at the southern border, they have this spectacular rain forest and, of course, the northern border is mount everest. and in between is this incredibly steep countries with these terrace rice fields. in japan and china we used to see terrorist rice fields to plant -- terrace rice fields. you might see 10 or 12 or in some extreme cases 15, 18 terraces. in nepal you lose count. i mean, they have 138 terraces up the side of this hill growing rice or potatoes or crops. just spectacular rugged country. and then the kathmandu valley, the central valley of nepal, is

incredibly beautiful. and to the north they have i think six of the world's 12 highest mountains including the spectacular mount everest. so just for, i mean, like, one big national park i would vote nepal. >> host: back to your calls for t.r. reid. glendale, wisconsin, glenn. plead go ahead. glenn, you with us? >> caller: i'm here. >> host: go ahead. grandkid i just wanted to ask you what you think the essence of the political divide is in this country not only as it applies to health care, but practically everything. because it seems to me -- i have an answer for that question, but i'm just wondering what yours would be. >> host: glenn, very quickly, what's your answer? >> guest: what's your answer, yeah? >> caller: it's about blame and judgment. it's about class warfare. >> host: t.r. reid. >> guest: yeah. our country is divided, i think that's right. we had a guy who ran for

president promising to try to overcome the divides, and i think it's a big reason obama won because people saw we needed that kind of leader. it's clear he hasn't been able to do it, at least not yet. why are we so divided? here's what i think. may i first say, glenn, in the first place you should always be suspicious of somebody who comes up with an overarching theory of everything. theories that explain everything are always wrong, but i've got one anyway. so what i've been seeing is in the, in the kind of polling and this shows up in everybody's polls is a sense of pessimism among americans. one way this is expressed is do you think the united states is in decline, and the most recent polls i've seen this year in 2010, 60-65% of the american people think we're in decline. do you think life will be better for your kids than it has been for you? about 65% of americans say no. in other words, they think other

countries are going to do better, and we're going to do worse in this century than we've done in the past. i don't buy that incidentally, i think my kids are going to do better than i've done. but if you believe that, if you think things are getting worse and we're in decline and you're scared of losing what you've got, then i think people grip on and grab and hold on as hard as they can to what they've got. and you're scared of working together, you're scared of big change. so i think that fundamental pessimism which our country also had in 1979 and 1980, we had the same kind of feeling, i think that's a reason for intense political division. and if we get our confidence back, if things start to click for america, i think we'll come together politically too. that's -- the flaw with this theory is it's too pat, it covers everything and, therefore, it's got to be wrong, but that's kind of what i've been thinking recently.

>> host: there was a recent rumor that you were thinking about running for political office. >> guest: yeah. what happened is, you know, i've been working on health care, and as i said earlier in the show, i think it may well be that the way we're going to get to universal health care in america is state by state. and i live in this terrific state, colorado, five million of us, a pretty well-governed state. maybe colorado could be a leader in getting to universal health care. and my local state rep down in the scenic confines of southeast denver was the leading person in our state legislature on health care reform. she really knew that issue. and all of a sudden, boom, in the middle of her term our state rep announced that she was going to retire. and so there was a vacancy in her seat, and some people working on health care reform knew that i lived in that district and said why don't you do this, and maybe you could get colorado to be a leader.

and i grabbed at that, and i jumped at the chance. and i didn't win. the thing that makes this a little easier to bear was the guy who beat me was better. i mean, you don't like to admit that, but the guy who beat me had been working for the party for years, he was a good loyalist which i have not been, and he's turned out to be a very good state rep. daniel kagan, is his name, he's been good. i think it helps a little if you run and lose if the other guy, if the other guy is better or, you know? and kagan was a better state rep than i would have been. i tried, i lost and probably a good thing because i've been so busy selling the book that i wouldn't have had time to be a decent state rep. >> host: al in tampa, good afternoon. >> caller: hi, mr. reid. you were mentioning among other countries that have a universal health system, the u.k.

back when they decided to start that did they have as heavily entrenched for-profit insurance industry as here, and if they did, did they fight it like the ones that are fighting it here? or was it a totally different situation? or any of the other countries that you know about in if europe that have the plan that covers everyone? >> guest: yeah, that's a good question, al, and it is relevant. no, britain got to universal health care, well, they passed the bill in 1946, they started the national health service in 1948. the doctors fought it, but they didn't have an entrenched for-profit insurance industry. the place that i think is relevant p to the united states is switzerland. switzerland is a country like us, it's a fiery democracy with feisty parties. there's a lot of money floating around their politics, like here, and they have big drug companies and big international

insurance companies. i talk about this, i describe this at some length in my book. and the swiss insurance companies started taking lessons from wellpoint and unitedhealth and these other for-profit insurance companies in the united states. they figured out, as our insurance companies have figured out, is if you want to make a profit, then don't ever cover anybody who's been sick because they might make a claim. they followed us in doing the pre-existing condition thing. the swiss insurance companies, like the american companies, started hiring large numbers of underwriters whose job is to stamp no, you know, to deny a claim because it's cheaper for them to send you a form letter saying denied than to actually pay your claim. and the swiss health insurance industry by the mid '90s looked a lot like ours. there were lots of denials, and people were unhappy. 5% of the people in switzerland couldn't get insurance at all because they had a pre-existing

condition. and the swiss decided that this was unacceptable. they said, in a rich society everybody -- not 95%, but everybody -- should have health coverage. so they had a national referendum. it was led by a young woman named ruth dreifuss who was the health minister, and she said, doggone it, we're a rich country, we're all in this together, we're all citizens of the same country, let's give everybody health care. and the insurance industry which thought they were going to lose on the deal fought it like crazy. huge investment. the drug companies fought it like crazy. and ruth dreifuss and others like her took on this huge drug company and insurance company money and won. they passed a national referendum that said the insurance companies have to sell their product to everybody. they took the profit out of health insurance, so basic health insurance is a nonprofit endeavor now in switzerland, and today -- they did it in '94, the

swiss love the system. they're so proud of it. they would never go back. and that health minister who led the fight, ruth dreifuss, went on to become the first female president of the swiss fed case. so i offer that in my book as a model. yeah, you can take on entrenched interests and big money in health care if you make the right argument. and her argument was, we think everybody who's sick should have access to a doctor. and that is the case in all the other rich countries. it's only in america that we let tens of thousands of our neighbors die every year of treatable diseases because they can't see a doctor. we meet one on the first page of my book. we meet a 32-year-old college graduate who got sick, so the insurance companies wouldn't sell her coverage anymore, and she died of a treatable disease because she couldn't afford the drugs and doctors she needed in the richest country in the world. that was starting to happen in switzerland, and the swiss

changed it even though the insurance companies fought 'em like crazy. so this is another reason why i'm so confident in my book. i know we could change our system despite the money p floating around our politics if we had a leader to tell us to do the right thing. >> host: do other countries have problems with earmarks as we do here in the u.s.? this is from paul. >> guest: oh. well, other countries certainly have powerful members of the parliament taking national money and pumping it into their districts, yeah, that definitely happens. they don't call it earmarks, but i'd give you a good example, you know, in japan if you're, any town of any importance in japan nowadays has a bullet train. this is really important that you have the high-speed bullet train come to your town. and we used to live, many years ago peggy and i lived on the southern island of japan, and it's far from the big cities on the main island.

so it took a long time to get the bullet train down there, but there was a very powerful member of the japanese dyad from the southernmost, it's kind of like miami, the southernmost town. so he got a bullet train built from midway, but the middle part of the island still didn't because they had a weak parliamentarian. so they had this national train system with a big gap in it because one powerful congressman got his city the service, but the other guy wasn't as powerful. so, yeah, every country i've ever lived in or watched members of congress try to snatch tax money and pour it into their districts. this is a totally common democratic phenomenon. .. book as the text and then

there's this big stack of used books. oh, that ticks me off. i don't make a penny when they buy those books used. the bookstore makes all the

dough. i don't make a dime. may i say college students out there, when you buy the required text, buy the latest edition and then the author will get a little something out of it. >> host: and i can't imagine no one would want to know about the saga of the waterwayser fee bill. from 1980. >> guest: well, i did pick a fairly mundane piece of legislation for my bill becomes a law course book. but as a matter of fact, it's a really fascinating story among other things. that bill was sponsored by the lowest ranking member of the minority party in the senate at the time it was pete dominici of new mexico. and the u.s. senate, they are so hung up on rank and hierarchy and stature that they rate each of them by seniority and rank. and dominici was ranked 100uth

-- 100th out of 100th. and on the last day of congress it was passed into law. so it really became a fabulous story. even though it is about waterway user charges. and people have said to me many times, man, you were so lucky that you chose such an interesting bill to focus on. and my answer to that, no, i didn't pick an interesting bill but all of them are interesting. if you look closely enough, if you know all the lobbying and all the manipulating and all the political trickery going on around them and the money pouring in to pass them or defeat them, they're all interesting. it doesn't matter what the is, "congressional odyssey" turned out to be a pretty good story. i worked on it for a couple years. i finally hit on "congressional odyssey" because the bill had as many twists and turns as ulysses

tried to get home from the trojan wars. it took him 10 years. i had been chatting with -- was it my dad or my father-in-law about the title for this book and i finally hit on "congressional odyssey" and i called up my father-in-law and i said i'm going to call it "congressional odyssey" and he couldn't hear and i said congressional honesty. that will be a short book. >> host: jennifer from hartford, connecticut, you're on air with t.r. reid. >> caller: i would support for you if you ran for office because you're a straight shooter and again, what you're talking about. but i do have a comment or question. last night on fox, glenn beck said that education for our children is not their right but a privilege.

now, thomas fathers, and a signer of the constitution, started america pubc school good education was the right of every chi free. but i have to say very close was there was a doctor who really, a, understood what i was trying to do in this book, and, b, liked it. that's closer.sor but, no, i think it deserves to be on the shelf next to "war and peace" is probably the best line i ever got. >> host: and we forgot to find out why you dedicated "the healing of america" to dwight eisenhower? >> guest: yeah. well, in "the healing of america", i make the argument -- let's be blunt about it that other rich countries do a better job of providing healthcare to their citizens than the united states does. and i have learned -- and if you remember earlier we said -- i wrote that book "confucius lives

next door" it's about how asian countries have lower crime rates than we do. "in the united states of europe" how they came together and built this kind of market superpower. in all these books i'm saying to americans there's things we could learn overseas. there's things other countries do better than we do. we have a great powerful innovative country. but there are things we could do better by learning from overseas. and here's what i've learned the hard way, peter, if you write a book saying other countries have lower crime rates than the united states and you go particularly on conservative talk radio, people say, you hate america. you hate our country. i used to get that a lot. you know, you hate your country. hey, i served in the u.s. army voluntarily. i don't hate our country. i love our country. and how dare you say that any country does anything better

than the united states of america. and so i knew that was going to happen for this book. in this book i come right out and say the kerr countries cover everybody, better results, less spending, that's better. i knew i would get nailed for it. here's my defense mechanism, i dedicated the book to dwight d. eisenhower. and the reason is -- ike, is the supreme allied commander to europe and he comes home and is elected president and takes over the white house in 1953. and the biggest domestic issue facing our country then was interstate transit. we had a series of two-lane highways built by the states. some were dirt roads. if you tried to drive across the united states some of the roads were mud. and ike said we got to do this. and the various highway departments and planners came up with this plan for a network of two-lane highways running from farms to markets across the country.

and it went through the main street of every city in america. not what we have today. and ike said, wait a minute, wait a minute, i've seen something better. because he had been supreme allied commander in europe. and in germany he had seen these highways the nazis built. they were four-lane divided highways with curving on-ramps and off-ramps and no stop signs, and no red lights. every 100 miles they put a gas station along the highway. these were the autobahns but they were expressways. and he had seen them. and ike says in his memoir, general dwight d. eisenhower says in his memoir, i saw the two-lane highway plans put forth by our states but i had seen four-lane ribbons of highway crisscrossing a nation and i saw the value of that and i took the german plan and imposed it on america. that's the interstate highway system. in fact, did you notice the official name is the dwight d. eisenhower interstate highway system.

today, i think it's 45,000 miles of highway and 14,000 interchanges and 0 stoplights, you know, and we love the interstates. they are an intergal part of united states. he borrowed the ideas from nazis and nobody seems to care. this was my defense mechanism. when people say how dare you claim people say other countries have better healthcare, ike and i, it's comparative analysis. that's why i did it. >> host: portland, oregon, jeremy, you're on with t.r. reid. thanks for holding. >> caller: thank you. let's see. make sure -- actually i have two questions i'll try to be succinct and get to the point. my first question, as the countries as you've identified have more efficient, reasonable, rational public either. hybrid public/private healthcare

or mostly public healthcare systems how many of those ones, if you know, had to transition from a system that's more similar to ours that has all these entrenched private interests hmos and insurance companies? and how do they do it? and if not, is that maybe -- what role does that play in making it so difficult for the obama administration right now -- >> host: got it, jeremy. thanks. mr. reid? >> guest: yeah. how many countries had to transit from a rotten spotty erratic expensive healthcare system like ours to get to universal coverage? that's a terrific question. i do go through this in the book. let's see. canada did, britain did. france did. taiwan did. the netherlands did. a lot of countries have made that transition because they made the moral commitment to cover everybody. i mean, germany -- i won't count 'cause they started in 1883.

but a lot of countries have done it. did it in the 20th century. and i describe this at some length how these different countries got there. and i'll tell you the pattern. it's not universal but a very common pattern. the most common pattern is, some leader came along and said to the people of the country, hey, we need to provide healthcare for everybody in our country who's sick. everybody in our country, all our neighbors should have access to a doctor when they need it. and people bought that argument. but they only bought it because a leader came along and as i was talking earlier about what happened in switzerland, in many cases, the entrenched interests fought it like crazy. and canada the doctors went on strike. the doctors went on strike to protest universal coverage 'cause they thought it would get in the way of their practice.

in many countries the insurance industry and the drug industry put up big money to fight this idea. but a leader, a leader came along and said to the people, doggone it, let's do the right thing. let's make the moral commitment to cover everybody. it's striking how often that is the pattern. if you read my book you'll see this pattern over and over in these different countries. so the answer is, yes, a country can transit from a private for-profit spotty insurance system like we have to universal coverage. well, and if you want an example right here at v3"nhome, in 1965 had an hew secretary, wilbert cohen and a president lyndon johnson who got this crazy idea that all american seniors should have health insurance. and they decided the way to do it was with a canadian model through medicare where you get your insurance to government but go to private doctors and the insurance companies the doctors and the american medical

association fought like crazy. it was socialism. it was outrageous. how dare we! and now, of course, nobody would give up medicare. if you told the seniors to drop medicare and go to private insurance, they'd rebel. you can overcome entrenched interests if a leader convinces people that this is the right thing to do. i saw it -- in my book, you'll see it in many different countries. >> host: scooter computer tweets in, t.r. reid says students don't buy my textbooks used then says it would be a snap for the u.s. to provide free medical schooling. fail! >> guest: i don't buy that at all. we can buy the textbooks for these kids, too, if they need it. if they're going to be primary care doctors. in fact, i would strongly recommend that medical schools teach a health policy course to all their -- all their doctors before they graduate. and, you know, look, here's a

perfect text for that book and the medical schools should provide it but they shouldn't provide it used. no they should provide a used edition. >> host: next with frank from beverly, new jersey. please, go ahead, frank. >> caller: great show. mr. reid, i have some issues about what you were saying and some comments you were making. >> guest: sure, sure. >> caller: about getting things for free, okay? >> guest: yeah. >> caller: in this country we have created a bunch of people that think they should get everything for free. and there's a major problem with this because our country -- our politicians and our government has created this monster by wanting to take care of everything we do in our lives and all our aspects. the problem here with healthcare has a lot to do with i'm going to go out on the limb and say there's possibly 20 to 30,000 illegal immigrants that don't pay anything for our system and

that puts a huge strain on our medical process in this country and on the hospitals and all that. whatever happened to old-fashioned earning. why does everybody have to get everything for free? >> host: mr. reid? >> guest: it's an comment question. -- excellent question. not everything is free. free healthcare is not free. somebody pays for it. really the question is what's the mechanism for paying it. how can we distribute this cost fairly? and i think this gets to -- i'm going to tell you about a concept that economists use called the distributive ethic, that is what's the fair way or the smart way to distribute different goods in society. for example, there's a distributive ethic for votes in our country. everybody gets one. bill gates gets one vote. and the guy who washes the bumper on bill gates limousine gets one vote.

very different in life and wealth but they both get one vote. that's our ethic for votes. and voting isn't free. i mean, some government has to set up a voting booth and buy the machinery and get the counters and test -- it's not free but we pay for it through taxes 'cause we've decided that's the right way to distribute the way to vote. we don't charge people 5 bucks even though that's what it may cost to count their vote. we have a different distributive, for example, foriates. -- for yachts. if you have the money and buy it throughoc# your own work or thh inheriting money or whatever, you get one and if you don't have the money you don't get one and we think that's a fair way to distribute yachts. so really your question is, which things should society make a social good, should society decide to pay for even though it costs money. education -- public education is not free. somebody pays for it. you pay for it in your taxes. i pay for it. and that's fine.

because we have made a social commitment to provide education that will make our country better over the long run. and i'd say ditto for most countries have decided ditto for healthcare. healthcare when you're sick is more like voting than it's like yachting. it's a social good that society should prevail. and you're 100% right. it is not free. somebody has got to pay the hospital. somebody has got to pay the doctor and buy the pills, i agree that. the question is how should you distribute this resource? should you come up with a mechanism where everybody has access to it even though we all have to pay. and the most common formula in the world, in the rich countries, not in the poor countries, the most common formula for allocating healthcare is this. healthcare for everybody, paid for by everybody, that is everybody contributes and everybody benefits. this is how we do public education.

you know, if you were charged with a crime, you would be guaranteed an impartial judge, an impartial jury, a free lawyer if you couldn't forward one. -- afford one. we all pay for it. even though it's not free, somebody pays for it. because we've decided to allocate this good as a social good fairly. and all i'm saying is the other rich countries havefsq all deci that healthcare, too, should be distributed like the other rights that people have. and the united states has never made that determination. now, here's the striking economic fact which i mentioned before. if you do cover everybody, if you make that commitment, you save money. universal coverage costs less per capita than the kind of spotty system we have in america. definitely not free. somebody has to pay for it. and really the question is, is the community wide, social wide way we're going to pay for it.

if we say you're rich or your employer is rich you get good healthcare and if not, tough. and no other country has made the decision that way. >> host: joan, beverly hills, california, you're on with author t.r. reid on book tv. >> caller: yes. wonderful interviewer and host. i was wondering going back to your book, "confucius lives next door," and you're speaking of the emergence of the poor eastern asian nations, have you ever run across demings who oversaw the rebuilding of tokyo, japan, after the building after world war ii? >> host: why do you ask? joan, why do you ask that question? >> caller: he's an american evidently could have left an imprint with the emerging countries. >> host: all right. t.r. reid?

>> guest: no, you're absolutely right. deming was an american. he was a quality control expert. and there's a chapter about him in my book, "the chip". he's in the "the chip". he's also in "confucius lives next door" because he did teach east asian countries how to get the kind of quality control that they're famous for. deming -- and i met mr. deming and reported on him i think when i was writing my microchip book and i also put him in my confucius book. he was an american. and he thought up these mechanisms for building in quality from the very beginning. and his question -- the question deming always asked was, would you rather burn the toast and scrape it or would you rather make the toast right the first time? the answer's pretty obvious. and in order to make toast right

you've got to build in good toast-making procedures into every step of the way. this is what deming was preaching in the '60s, '50s and '60s. and he got very little audience in the united states. in the '50s and '60s we were the dominant manufacturing force in the world. we didn't need any advice on quality, right. the people who really listened to him were the east asians and particularly the japanese. and deming went over there and instructed the japanese on quality control and they listened. they listened. in fact, today, to this day, the kind of pulitzer prize of manufacturing in japan -- they give a prize every year at some guy who's good at high quality manufacturing. it's called the deming. -- deming prize named after our american guy and deming told me when i met him he always had a better audience in japan and the rest of asia than in the united states because we felt we didn't

need him. and, of course, one of the reasons the japanese have been so successful on the world economic stage is because they have this earned reputation for high quality manufacturer. but they learned it from an american. thank you for asking me. yeah, he's in two books. >> host: lee from l.a. stands for what does the t.r. stand for and why do you use initials rather than your name and what do your friends call you. >> guest: t.r. is thomas roy reid and i'm thomas roadway reid iii and i was thomas reid for quite a while. peggy and i were living in japan as newlyweds and i was kind of freelancing for american magazines. and i lobbed in a couple of stories -- i think to playboy, anyway, that kind of magazine with my dad's name -- my by-line by thomas r. reid on it and my

dad says why are you putting our name in those dirty mags? and so then here's what i did. i wrote a piece for tv guide. there's nothing wrong with tv guide, you know, it's a perfectly legitimate magazine. and i wrote a piece about what japanese tv is like for tv guide. it's pretty good television. and they had at the time -- they had this jay leno show, the tonight show in just that. -- japan. it was called "11 pm" and they had a jay leno, you know, figure and the band leader -- you know, the sidekick kind of figure on this japanese show was this naked woman and she was sitting naked on this black leather couch, this is so bizarre, and whenever they went for a commercial break they would flash to this naked woman for about 2 seconds and she would sit there and say in english, she said, hurry on down to my house, baby, ain't nobody home but me.

why did she say that? why was she naked. totally weird. and i threw this in my piece for tv guide because it was so bizarre. and tv guide's editors read this story about japanese tv and, of course, they take that one line out and make it the lead line of the story and then they&fz commission this picture of this incredibly buxom like japanese women are not sitting on their couch and it said by thomas r. reid. it was in tv guide, a pretty popular magazine. so my dad calls me up and says, don't put my name on those filthy articles anymore. i was innocent. and so i changed it to t.r. reid. and i've been t.r. reid ever since. many of my fellow records call me t.r. and many call me thomas. >> host: where did your parents

go up and what did they do. >> guest: my dad was thomas r. reid ii and he was a business second a mccormick at the spice company and then at ford motor company and since he worked at ford i grew up in detroit. my mom was a european. and her naturalization papers says czechoslovakia, but she was actually born in 1912. and i think at that time her part of czechoslovakia was in the austrian hungarian. we don't know much about my mom. she was a mystery figure. a darling woman with a german accent. and she used to say to me, you idiot, you have no brain she would say to me. i've always found germans a little scary.

and i grew up in michigan just west of detroit. >> host: claudette in lewiston, idaho please go ahead with your question. >> caller: thank you very much for your commentary here. i'm learning a lot. your statement you made you would prefer state-by-state healthcare, i think what us folks in the grassroots, if you want to call it that, we don't want more government control. so would the state-by-state insurance benefit us? could we do that? not that we don't want everyone to have healthcare. we just don't want the government more involved in our lives. and one more statement, you served in the navy and thank you for that, i think i get real concerned with especially the europeans saying how bad we are and everything. but when you think all of the men and women that we had buried in their land that we went over and gave their lives for, i get kind of upset about that. thank you. >> host: t.r. reid?

>> guest: yeah, i'm totally with you. and i mention this in my europe book. hey, we liberated them. we helped them defeat the nazis and how come they invent the laudbergers and that's a good point. i wouldn't say i prefer a state-by-state approach to universal coverage. i'd be delighted if we did it on a national basis as many countries have done. i just don't think it's likely to happen. i think there's too much money being made in the current system. and that money really is reflected in political power in congress. i think we're more likely to get there state-by-state because -- one reason, not the only reason but the big insurance companies have less political clout in state legislatures than they do in a national legislature in washington.wúj it's fine for me how we get there. i don't care whether it's

state-by-state or nationally. i just think state-by-state is more likely. and as for more government control, you know, if you look at my new book, "the healing of america", as you will see, many countries provide universal coverage with private docs, private insurance. and some countries do have government-run healthcare and that's absolutely true. but a lot of countries do it in the private sector. and as i think i said earlier on the show, i argue in my book that some countries are less socialized than the u.s. in, for example, germany and switzerland, they don't have a medicare. they don't have government-run health insurance for seniors. people stay with the private insurer cradle to grave. i don't think that covering everybody necessarily means more government control. we could do it in the private sector. it does require government regulation of insurers just like we regulate airlines.

we used to regulate banks. i don't know that we do that so well anymore. we would to have regulate the insurance companies and ban some of their reprehensible practices. but we could definitely cover everybody in the private sector. i don't think there's any question about that. you read my book and you'll see that we could definitely do it. it doesn't have to be big government. it could be. government would work, too. but if you don't want more government involvement but you want everybody covered, then you want to look at the models that i saw in switzerland, germany, netherlands, belgium, japan, places like that where they do it all in the private sector. >> host: you wrote to us that when i set out to write

>> host: what are you writing? and why -- >> guest: my next book i think -- i think my next book is going to be "what happens when the other -- when rich countries like japan, china and the saudis stop buying our treasury bonds" as i think most listeners know. our federal government is spending hundreds of billions or a trillion dollars more than every year than we take in, in taxes. and to finance that, to bring in the money we spend, we borrow money from other rich countries. we sell them treasury bonds but when they buy a bond they're lending us the money. we have to pay it back in 5, 10 or 30 years.

and even though our deficits are huge and seem to be getting bigger, these countries continue lending us the money. but a lot of economists have started warning that they won't anymore. that they're going to decide the united states is not a safe bet. and stop lending us money. and the premier of china, the president of china hu-jintao said this is not a good investment anymore. if they don't finance our deficit, we're in huge trouble. the dollar will go to zero. so i'm thinking of writing a book about what's going to happen and how the u.s. would respond if that happened.gca and that's why i'm reading fred burkeson's book the united states is a debtor nation and international finance because i don't know much about this.

it's interesting that you ask me that 'cause see, here the deals. a lot of authors wouldn't tell you what they're going to write next. i've got this great idea for a book. i think it's going to be timely and people will want to know about it. but i don't want some other author to steal my idea and get it out before i do. i take a different tack on this. i always tell everybody i know including the entire audience of c-span what i'm going to write next. and the reason is i hope if any author gets the idea, she will say, oh, god, no reid is going to do that one. i better not. i hope i can scare them off and do this one myself. so when i was doing healthcare in other rich countries, i told everybody i met, i am trying to -- i'm writing a book about why it is all the other industrialized democracies can cover everybody and we can't. i told everybody just in the hope that nobody else would jump on this idea if you follow me and it worked. my book came out and nobody else has done it. anyway, i'm thinking of doing

that book. what would happen? i mean, you know, the kind of classic story of the american takes the family to paris to see france and they check into the hotel in paris and, you know, it's 280 euros a night. god, that's 400 bucks a night. $425 bucks a night and it's not even that good a room. you know that scenario. what's going to happen if they stop buying our bonds, then one night in a flea bag hotel in paris will caught $28,000 'cause the dollar won't be worth anything. it's the kind of thing that could happen if they stop lending us the money. and we're pretty addicted to deficit financing now. i think it would be very hard for the united states to build a life without this money. so anyway, i'm thinking of doing. and that's why i'm reading that

fairly esoteric set of books to learn about this. >> host: why do you agree back to "in cold blood"? >> guest: "in cold blood," the reason is -- i mean, truman capote had a terrific story there. but the way he tells it, the way he structures it. first you meet the victims and you spend a long time in this community in kansas and get to know the victims and their family and everything. and then next you meet the two perpetrators. and you spend time with them and their families and their life. it's just -- and then the crime happens. very dramatically done and then we start to meet the detectives and the police who are going to, you know, crack this crime. and then you meet the jailers and then you meet -- it's just just carefully structured. i mean, you know, if you look at any book, you could start anywhere. and you could finish anywhere.

but i think he figured out exactly the right way to tell that story and that's what i do. i really -- i don't like to start a book until i know the end. and i've said this to my own kids. if you're going to write something, know what the last line is going to be before you write the first line because you do better that way. i have taught writing courses at colleges or journalism courses. and here's my rule. are you ready? you want to hear a very complicated rule? when you write anything, whether it's an article or a book, nonfiction, you should start at the beginning and work to the end by way of the middle. did you hear that? start at the beginning, work through the middle and get to the end. does this seem obvious? yeah. but as a matter of fact, every day of my life i read an article where the guy didn't find the beginning, you know, you're reading in about two pages and all of a sudden, boom, there's the beginning of his article and then you read along and you reach the end but the author didn't know it.

and she goes on for four more pages after she should have ended it. are you seeing what i'm saying. if you outline it and if you structure it right, then you'll start at the beginning. you'll write through the middle and get to the end and the reader doesn't even notice. the reader just thinks that's normal but it takes work and truman capote really did that. in that book, i mentioned by the great, great, great john mcphee a great nonfiction writer, "in coming in the country." it's a book in alaska. someone tells him a story. it's a great, great story but he lays out the story. and at the same time he's telling you the story, he's telling you how he found the story. and he just intertwines the two of them. as a writer you know it's not an accident. as a matter of fact, what john mcphee would do is, he would write paragraphs and stick them on a 3x5 card and stick them on

a board and move them around until he got the right order. the reason i read these is to get the notion of structure, of organizing, of outlining and i will say to anybody watching this who wants to write anything in nonfiction, read those books and think about how he structured it. why did she start there? why did she finish here? why was this in the middle if you follow me? that's a requirement of good writing. and that's why i read those books 'cause those people really put the work into organizing. and if i do it right people call me up or say, well, you know, i thought this was going to be complicated. but really it was a pretty -- it was pretty easy. you know, it's hard -- it's hard work to make complicated stuff easy. and you have to organize and truman capote and john mcphee are brilliant at it so that's why i read them. >> host: about 15 minutes left with our guest, t.r. reid in denver. ron, atlanta, georgia, you're on the air? ron?

>> caller: this is ron. i will try to make it quick. i read both your books. let's see "confucius lives next door" and the "united states of europe". >> guest: thank you. >> host: >> caller: there's a comment or a question or two that i would like to ask of you, mr. reid. in our healthcare for the last year or two or three, there's been a lot of about the term tort of reform and also malpractice. do the europeans and the japanese -- do they have as many problems as we do with malpractice? . >> host: mr. reid? >> guest: yeah, it's an excellent question. yes, as a matter of fact all countries have a problem with patients who are injured by hospitals or doctors. and sometimes, you know, it's an injury that stays with you for life.

and there needs to be some method of compensating those patients. and sometimes you have to discipline the doctor or the hospital. but no country does it through the tort system. we're the only one who does that. all the other countries have decided that's an inefficient and inexact way to take a complicated medical case and turn it over to a jury of laymen and hope for the best. the other countries just don't do that in that way. in my new book, "the healing of america" i describe how other countries do it. but no country does it through the malpractice system. another pretty interesting distinction as i said iometimes if a patient is injured by a doctor, that that person requires lifetime medical assistance, you know, if you're badly injured, and in america, lifetime medical assistance is incredibly expensive. that's why we have these multimillion dollar judgments against doctors.

if you're injured in britain and you need lifetime medical assistance, it's free. it would have been free if you weren't injured. do you see what i mean? so the judgments in these other countries are significantly smaller but the other thing is they don't do it through the tort system. they have other mechanisms to assess blame and to compensate injured patients. >> host: jeanine, laguna woods, california. >> caller: hi. mr. reid. i have two of your books, your "confucius lives next door" book and your healthcare book you talked about today. would you please address a knotty problem specifically about the compensation to physicians. i have an example i can give you. but one thing that i know about is that many, many people emigrate to our country in order to practice medicine because of what we offer them here in terms of research and compensation. the second thing i do know is that in france, maybe this country isn't a very good example from what you've talked

about but the average compensation for a physician in france is $40,000. so i would like you to address this more specifically about compensating our wonderful physicians. we have met many in our lives. thank you. >> host: thank you. >> guest: yeah, it's a good point. there's no question that american doctors make more than doctors in any other developed country. that's absolutely clear. and all the other doctors know it. when i went to see them, if i was doing this in kansas or michigan i'd make four times as much but they wouldn't make four times as much but you're right french doctors make considerably smaller incomes than americans do. on the other hand, as we've said already they graduate from medical school with no debt. they don't have that burden. and their malpractice premiums are zero or very small because they don't have the medical malpractice problem that american doctors have. yeah, in all the other industrialized democracies, the administrative costs of running

a medical practice, you know, billing and paperwork and all that stuff are vastly lower because we have the most inefficient system in the world. all the other countries have made it much more efficient. so it's cheaper to be a doctor in other countries so they need less income because their overhead is lower. still, they make less money than american doctors do. and they all know that. and this is not the only reason. it's one reason why american healthcare costs more because we pay or providers more. i don't think it's the biggest reason. but it is one reason. and if we, as i said, if we took the step of making medical education cheap or free, and if we fixed our malpractice system so doctors didn't have these huge premiums, then we could presumably pay our doctors somewhat less as well. i think if we're going to find

the money to cover everybody, which i feel we ought to do, some people are obviously going to lose. we don't have enough money unless the insurance companies are going to make less money in a rational system. some of the big for-profit hospital chains are going to make less money and some doctors -- some specialist doctors making a million a year are going to make less. i think in return the primary care docs, family doctors, pediatricians, et cetera, would make more. but a fix to our system will probably require that our highest paid specialists make less. >> host: laconia, new hampshire, marcy, you're on with t.r. reid. >> caller: yes, thank you. hi, mr. reid. >> guest: hi. >> caller: i think you're doing a wonderful job today. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: and you're so articulate and worldly, i was just wondering if you would tell us about your faith and why you believe the way you do and if

you've ever been tempted to convert to something else. thanks. >> host: mr. reid? >> guest: my faith. my faith. yeah, i'm tempted. i'm roman catholic. and it's been an important part of my life. i think my catholic faith got strongest when we lived in asia because it was just a tie back to the western world. and it's been an important part of my life but recently i've been frustrated with the hierarchy of the american catholic bishops. and so i'm actually on a kind of journey of faith. i've been looking at other -- at other denominations. i've gone to many -- several different churches in recent months looking around because i'm kind of fed up with the american catholic hierarchy and i've gotten in this healthcare thing and it bothers me, the american bishops have opposed

efforts to increase healthcare coverage. that doesn't seem right to me. i think catholics ought to support increasing coverage. our bishops say they're opposed to healthcare reform because they're opposed to abortion. but that's an illogical position. the fact is universaal coverage -- this is important. universal healthcare coverage reduces the number of abortions. it reduces the number of abortions. in fact, if you look -- in my book at all the countries, rich countries that provide universal coverage, they have lower rates of abortion than the united states. now, why would that be? well, cardinal basil hume explained it. in britain abortion is legal and it's free. it's free like all medical procedures but they have a lower rate of abortion than the united states does. why? well, if you think about it, if that -- the cardinal said if

that frightened unemployed unmarried 19-year-old knows that she and her baby are going to have access to good healthcare, without breaking the bank, she's more likely to carry that baby to term. that seems so obvious to me. universal coverage reduces the number of abortions and, therefore, it just bugs me that the catholic hierarchy in the united states opposes expanding coverage and says it's because they're worried about abortions. this is like saying i don't want to fix the broken furnace because i'm afraid of pneumonia. hey, fix the furnace and you'll have less pneumonia. cover more people and you'll have more abortions. it's obvious. it's clear. you can see it all over the world. anyway, that's the long answer to your question, sorry. >> host: paul, las vegas, nevada. we have about five minutes left. >> caller: hi, peter. and hi t.r., if i may call you that. >> guest: hi. >> caller: i always enjoyed your

work particularly on npr you're informative and funny. my question today is, are other societies' political systems more responsive to the needs of society than ours is? and could you comment on the morality of opposing needed reforms for purely partisan political reasons. and thanks a lot and i look forward to many more years of listening to your work. bye-bye. >> guest: thanks very much. no. are our -- to me the great anomaly which i never understood was the liberal democratic party in japan which ran -- won every election in japan for about 50 years. i never felt really represented, the people of japan in an effective way.

but it was a powerful force and the japanese are into structure and keeping things the same. so, no, i think we do arguably a better job. and britain, for example -- we noticed when we lived in britain, if you want to run for parliament, they don't have party primaries. the party -- some party committee picks you to be the labour candidate or the conservative candidate for east ipswich, you know, in parliament. and quite often they fly in somebody from london or from some big city who's a friend of the prime minister to be the candidate. i mean, they have candidates who have never lived in the town. to me that's less democratic than our system where people have to go out and get to the voters, a, to be the party nominee and then to win the election. so, yeah, the answer to your question is, if you feel our system is not responsive to the popular will, that's true in other democracies as well. >> host: paul in leavenworth,

kansas, we have 2 minutes left. >> caller: yes, sir. let me set this up quickly. i'm afraid in this country we're building a huge class of -- the permanent underclass because our industrial system is going away. and the same thing happened in england especially in the north of britain and scotland. and i wonder from your experience living in britain, how the british deal with that even -- or do they even deal with it at all? again, we're building an underclass -- >> host: got the point, thanks, paul. >> guest: the british understand the need for social mobility. they had a much stronger class system than we do. i think americans is still a pretty socially mobile society. people come up from nowhere and can succeed in our country because we make opportunity available. this is one of the reasons i think we have universal healthcare. you can't really have the opportunity to succeed if you're sick and can't get treated.

it's part of the american dream. to give everybody a chance. and providing them healthcare is part of giving them a chance of giving them an equal chance. >> host: thomas roy reid has been our guest on "in depth" for the last three hours. these are his english books, "confucius l ves next door,"n "the chip", "united states of europe", "the healing of america", his most recent, "congressional odyssey," his first and his best reviewed "ski japan!". t.r. reid, thank you for being with us on "in depth" this weekend. >> guest: peter, thanks. i say thanks to all the callers. great questions. thank you very much.wtgc% >> host: and next month on "in depth," john dean, former white house counsel under president nixon will be our guest on "in depth." that'll be the first weekend of april. thanks for being with us. this will re-air at midnight tonight and then again next weekend. if you missed any of it you can

certainly go to booktv.org and watch it online. thanks.uw" >>#4y you'll have another chano see "in depth" t.r. reid in its entirety next saturday at 9:00 am eastern.z3s >> in his book, in the science of liberty, thomas farris looks at the scientific revolution and the rise of berty democracy. the cato institute in washington, d.c., hosts the hour and 10-minute talk. >> good afternoon. welcome to the cato institute.

i'm the vice president for research here at cato. and it's my great privilege to welcome you here to a forum on the new book by timothy farris,7 "the science of liberty democracy, reason and the laws of nature." copies are available outside for purchase. as you might be able to guess from the title and subtitle something about the book's thesis but i'll give you a little better hint from the passage of the book's opening passages and i quote, the democratic revolution of the 18th century was sparked, caused is perhaps not too strong a word by the scientific revolution and science continues to empower political freedom today.