discuss the book "dread" whistle author. "washington journal is next. . . host: republicans, called 202- 737-0001. democrats, 202-737-0002. and independents, 202-628-0205.

we will start off this morning with sam youngman of "of the hill" newspaper. mr. youngman is white house correspondent. were you surprised by this, or did you see this coming? guest:, i think this was looking more and more inevitable as the days were passing, and with the fever pitch of the town halls from the country, i was not surprised about the manner in which was handled. host: what does all this mean for health care legislation? split it in perspective for us. guest: i think this gets us one step closer to seeing a bill come out in the senate finance committee. what we're looking at before the august recess was that they were embattled, and they were looking at was a major -- what was a major defeat on domestic priority. this puts them back, brings them back to par, i guess you would said.

host: here is how it all started yesterday when the health and human services secretary, kathleen sebelius, went on one of the sunday morning talk shows and i alluded to the future of the health-care bill. >> the president continues to believe that it is good to have consumer choice, let people choose an option in the new marketplace, and it is good to have competition for the private insurers who will inherit a lot of new customers, and without competition, cost could skyrocket in the monopoly system. he continues to be very supportive with options for consumers. what we do not know is what the senate finance committee is likely to come up with. they have been more focused on a co-op, a co-op as a competitor as opposed to a straight government-run program. what is important is choice and competition, and i am convinced

at the end of the day that the plan will have both of those, but that is not the essential elements. host: here are the words that sam youngman and everyone else jumped on. "not an essential element." the call this "a sign of compromise," in "the new york times." "readin' healthcare t leaves." is this a compromise, sam youngman? guest: i think matt drudge was probably more accurate when he said it was a retreat of sorts. the white house was very colorful along the lot -- was very careful along not drawing lines in the sand. i think compromise, reading tea leaves or retreat.

host: it to florida, democrats line. jane, you are on the air. what are you making from what you are hearing from the administration on health care? caller: i am disappointed because i felt like a strong public option would be absolutely part of this final bill. and that is one of the reasons that i voted for obama. i thought that he had the courage, he had deep political capital, if you will, to get that done. i am not too thrilled with a co- op. i think we should not be messing around with co-ops that have not been proven, where f -- whereas if we have medicare, which has been proven, actually i would like to have a single payer. but i would have settled for a public auction for not just myself but everybody i know. -- for a public option for not

just myself but everybody i know. i am very disappointed about this. i hope that as we go forward, the president can convince people that medicare type option is a way to go. maybe just open medicare to everyone as an option and let deadbeat. host: i appreciate your thoughts -- and let that be. host: i appreciate thoughts. sam youngman, how does the co-op worked? guest: it works like you would have it in some rural areas with electricity and water. it is a private owned company that sort of force is the insurance companies to compete on a more even keel. i think what we heard from that color is not going to be the last of some very real anchor i think what we heard from that koehler is not going to be the last of some very real -- i think what we heard from that

caller is not the last of the anchor that we are going to hear. host: what reaction do you hear so far from the more liberal wing, beginning with the speaker of the house? guest: i have not seen the speaker's comments. i have been focused mostly on the white house and the present's trip out west. i think -- andy pettitte and's trip out west. i think they do have to look for -- the president posset trip out west. host: voices from "mihill." upcoming, maryland, -- voices from "of the hill." from maryland, forestville, are you there? forestville, go ahead. caller: i am for the public option. host: tell us why. caller: because of the cost. we do not know anything about

health care co-ops. the public option has been explained to us, giving some competition to the insurance industry. the private health-care corporations do not care about the american people. the first caller is disappointed? it is time for democrats to stop being mealy mouthed and disappointed. it is time for us to let the president know is going to be a public option or nothing. we have to stiffen his spine and give him some backbone. republicans are not going to vote for anything. host: thanks for calling. independent line. back to the democrat line. sylvia from detroit. sylvia, are you there? caller: yes, i am. i am here. i am -- i want a public auction. i believe that this is a trick by the republicans because if they can delay it or stop it and

they go into next year, they are going to be focused on drumming up support for whoever is going to be running within their party for reelection. i think we need to put a stop to this. i agree with the first two callers -- public option. if we are not going to do it, then do not do it at all and let medicare -- and i am a medicare recipient. so what should happen, let medicare go into the fact that we are running out of money. where you no longer -- you can no longer sustain medicare the way in is. there is no backbone. stand up to the republicans and tell them if you want to continue to be the party of no, fine. no public auction, you are going to run out of medicare.

i believe what they -- no public option, you are going to run out of medicare. i believe what they are doing is stalling, and then you are going to have to rush. host: a trip are republicans, according to that caller. if you are on the gop side, what is your thinking at this point? guest: republican opposition was strong and it was largely unified. democrats do not need the republican help. they have overwhelming majorities in the house and the senate. the problem that they are running into is blue dog democrats in the senate and house. yes, there are going to be a lot on the left who are angry about this. this is a compromise, h retreat -- a retreat, whenever you want to call it. host: a short piece by senator kent conrad on the morning shows

yesterday. >> there are not the votes for the public auction in the senate. that is why i was asked to come up with an alternative. you can call it a public cooperative plan. it is not a public plan at all in the sense that the government runs it. government has nothing to do with it. once it is established, it is run by the members. >> senator, it would put up some of the seed money. >> yes, because there is a requirement to have reserves for any new health insurer, so the idea is that the government would front-end some of the money, and we have to discuss if some of that or all that gets paid back. there would be that amount of involvement, but then it would be membership run, a membership control. the government would have no ongoing obligation or any control. host: from "the wall street journal," aides to mitch

mcconnell, going back to the republican side, labeled ms. sebelius' comments a shift on the issue in an e-mail pointing out various occasions on which president obama had pointed out a public auction. on the republican line, what do you make about all this? caller: yes, it is just too bad that the president does not seem able to explain. as a republican, i am really not against the right public option. but it is funny that the president is not it able to explain what is going on with insurance companies. i work for a major company and in retirement i lost my insurance. i did not actually lose it, but i was given the opportunity to continue its with a tremendous premium. by the time i actually figured

it out, i realized i did not even have insurance coverage as i have had previously with the company. what they had done was morphed that into a supplement plan, and what was done, upon my retirement, i was forced into using my medicare since that was available to me at the time. that is what the companies are doing. you know, when people think that they retire and they have full coverage, they do not. they force you to use your medicare plan, and then after that, any coverage you might have had is then turned into or morphed into a supplement. host: i appreciate your thoughts. mike, from zero claire, wisconsin. here is the headline from "the washington times." what is your reaction? caller: i am basically against the so-called public health care option.

at the same time, earlier you had a lady called who said 47 million people were not injured. people tend to forget that 11 million are illegals. -- 47 million people are not insured. people tend to forget that 11 million r.e. illegals, and this is not address that. host: if you are a twitter user, follow us at twitter.com/cspanwj. "did just that -- it just this once me too much -- it just disappoints me too much." "obama administration officials said sunday the president is willing to accept the health care proposal that includes nonprofit health insurance cooperatives rather than insist on a government run insurance program. the talk here, sam youngman, of "the hill,", a business change

the nature of the meetings around the country? guest: i tend to agree to an extent with the assessment of some that some of the town hall things incidents that we saw were not representative of the whole, so i think the people that were coming out so forcefully will probably continue. it will be hard to appease them no matter what the plan. i think red state democrats will probably be a little less fearful of attending these meetings. host: from "the wall street journal" again. "some liberal advocates interpreted the administration's position as a shift in emphasis, but not away from the public auction. mr. obama wants to broaden the conversations of people understand that health care insurance reform is bigger than just one element."

congresswoman bernice johnson was also reacting to this news. >> could other house democrats support a health care reform measure that does not have a robust public option? >> it would be very difficult because without the public option we will have the same number of people uninsured. if the insurance companies wanted to ensure these people now, they would be insured. the only way that we can be sure that very low income people and persons who work for companies that do not offer insurance can have access to it is through an option that would give the private insurance companies a little competition. the private insurance companies have been in charge so long that i think they feel that nobody else ought to be able to do it. host: sam youngman of "the

hill, the take that a step further. with this news out there, and what we heard eddie bernice johnson have to say, how might that affect the numbers in the house? guest: despite the anger that we hear this morning, we are closer to health care passing because of compromise, for lack of a better word. obviously the bernice johnsons of the house, they have members that are going to be pressured. i am also curious as to how much labor unions are going to be involved to get the public option back in the discussion. host: kansas city, missouri, barbara. caller: i am extremely disappointed also that the president is thinking of cutting out the public option for. i just cannot understand how

anyone can listen to the republicans after the last eight years of how they ran it when they were there. we voted for obama because we wanted change, not because we wanted to listen to these loudmouth republicans who are just a few of them. but like they say, the greasy wheel gets the oil, the loud wheel gets the oil. most of america wants a public auction because it gives us -- just like the president said, it keeps the insurance companies honest. it is another way this co-op -- this co-op is another way a private person can align their money -- in their pocket with money. it is not going to be any different. they do not want the public option because they are going to lose money and that is what they are all about. host: let's go to houston now.

caller: i have been listening to people rattle on, so please give me a chance to say what i have to say. all of you people who think you are going to come back home, you had better get your apartment on k street or something because america is tired. i have not been to the doctor in years. the only time i get sick is if i eat bad food. this is the clinton plan from 15 years ago that is universal health care. can you show me a real apple? i can show you one. what is an artificial apple? what is an artificial orange? if we get the fda to put real food back on the market, stop bringing in tea and food from other countries, we will not have to -- stopping kenyan tainted food from other countries, -- stop bringing it

tainted food from other countries. they are actually growing food at the white house and eating it themselves. america, please wake up. host: more of the headlines, " the orange county register." "new plan floated for health care." "white house signals willingness to consider co-ops as alternative to government run model." there is the "l.a. times" headline. "white house backs of public health option." insurance exchanges or co-ops may replace it. the headline says, "west ward, ho." guest: today he is back in washington this evening. throughout the week, meetings in washington, welcoming nascar

champion jimmy johnson to the white house on wednesday, i believe. then he is off to camp david for the weekend, sort of a pre- vacation. then all of next week he is in martha's vineyard for a family vacation. host: "chicago tribune" headline, "obama backs off public option." here is "the washinton post," headline. "key feature of obama health plan may be out. administration hints of adoption is not the only way to go." what is the word "maffey" meetig this morning? guest: the public option has about as much chance at as tiger woods of winning the p.g.a. championship. kathleen sebelius was just

floating the idea that the public option might be dead. just to gauge reaction. if that was the case and they were watching the program this morning, they would see there is quite a bit of anger at dropping the option. but it is my sense that this is the only way they can bring people back to the negotiating table. host: jackie, thanks for waiting on the independent line. hi there. caller: good morning. mr. youngman, why don't you put on the screen the amount of money the insurance lobby has been giving to mr. baucus and mr. grassley said mr. mcconnell and several others. the head of the blue dog organization -- he is one of the top recipients of money from the insurance lobby. this is what it is all coming down to -- money talks and integrity walks. host: let's get a reaction from

our guest this morning, sam youngman. the insurance industry's role in all this? guest: they have been very effective. a lot of these ads do not pay for themselves. they have been able to incite a very intense and unified reaction throughout the country. in fact, i have been surprised at just how well organized the opposition to this has been, when you have a bunch of what appear to be individual voices saying the same thing, and it has been incredibly effective. i think the caller's criticisms of the campaign, your missions from health insurance groups to some of these lawmakers -- she is probably not alone in that criticism. host: in "the wall street journal" story, "the insurers are set to brief the biggest sigh of relief with the public plan dropped, wellpoint inc.,

which operates bluecross blueshield plants in 14 states. they are currently the biggest sellers of individual health policies, companies such as aetna and cigna corp. have less to lose from a public plan as a market mostly to employers." pennsylvania, democrats line. george, you are on the air. caller: yes. i am presently on medicare. when you really think about it, the insurance companies, health insurance companies are nothing but overpaid accountants. presently, the day to the accounting for medicare. they send the summary reports and things like that. we should allow insurance companies to continue to be accountants, but not paying these -- and getting these super

profits. it is all profiteering. i would like to repeat something a woman said yesterday. she reiterated what a woman said a couple of years ago on c-span. "republicans are composed of three types -- the elite, the super-stupid, and the super- racist." the super stupid and the super racist keep the leak and powered -- in power by voting for them. the others keep the elite in power by voting for these interests." thank you. it took getting your reaction to this headline -- host: getting your reaction to this headline this morning. "government run insurance could be dropped in favor of a co-op model. competition for for profits was still keep. a twitter message says, "face it, liberals, you were head.

we tried to warn you. mr. hope and changes in chicago p -- mr. hope and change is a chicago pol." next call. caller: i am a disabled vet from iraq. a government run system, just to give an example -- you know, i needed medicine from the government, from the virgin.a.,d i was told that the medicine i needed was bad on my liver. they said actually is bad to the extent that that is the reason i was not going to get it. people need to start looking at the rasheim they are talking about of health care, so that is what is going to come down here. -- people need to start looking

at the rationing they are talking about health care, so that is what is going to come down to. people need to look at this health care that is going to be government run. that is how it is in the v .a. now. host: steve is on the independent line. what is your reaction? caller: i am not happy at all. host: tell us why. caller: for one thing, me as a lot of people are, are out of work. these guys are out on their recess vacation. the president is going on his vacation, and everything that this guy has said that he is going to do is off the table. he just ran out of a campaign of lies. my opinion, all those people do not care anything about the average person.

i think he is a front man and a cowardly bitch. that is all i have to say. host: mr. youngman, take us back to the hill. there is a peace in ne," "in arkansas, a democrat navigates the health fight." with this new news out there, what could this mean for members of congress and their situations back home? host: i think it definitely improves moderate democrats' chances of reelection. they can stop worrying so much about the fate that so many of their colleagues were dealt in 1994 when the first health care debate went down in flames. this is a very politically sensitive topic as we have seen from the town hall debates. democrats have to be concerned now about the ender we are

hearing from the left. is this -- about the anger we are hearing from the left. we will probably less inclined to hit the pavement. host: georgia, connie on the line for democrats. caller: good morning. i am for the public option. my reason being the insurance companies can delegate or tell you you need to stay an extra day. they have to approve that. it is not between the doctor and patient. people are worrying about the government is intruding. the -- people are worrying about the government intruding. the insurance companies already doing that. host: moving on to fresno, california, to daniel on the republican line. caller: how are you doing? i am totally against it because

what people have to realize is the democrats and republicans are two wings of the same bird. they are not for the american people. it has been there for a minute -- it has been that way for many years, and i do not understand why the american people will not wake up and get out of this left-right paradigm because the republicans and democrats do not care about anybody but themselves. they have been corrupt for many years. host: moving to this call. ohio, karen, on the independent line. caller: hi. i just wanted to say that people should look at this monstrosity bill, over 1000 pages. all kinds of new regulations that will allow the government to run things -- adding on to your taxes, that you hard not kidding -- that you are not getting the right plan.

they are going to get into every aspect of our lives. do we really, really want that? host: here is an e-mail. "i am 70 years old. i voted for obama because he promised free health care for all. he gave in to the republicans and the insurance companies, first on the single payer and then the public option. he is too weak to be democratic choice. i am angry about this and will not forget in the next election. i thought obama was for the people. i was wrong." we have a call from florida, francis, on the independent life. go ahead. caller: what i called about is we have three of the most powerful systems in the world, and it is the richest, and it is surprising we cannot take care of people where health care is concerned. other countries, there hospitals

run by the government, which people go who cannot afford to. there are also private hospitals run by private people, the rich people who can afford it goes to. that can be done here. also, someone made a comment about the insurance companies being able to compete and prices would come down. i do not think that is quite true because you look at all the other companies in this country that compete and all the prizes are the same. i do not understand. the lobbyists are getting to these senators and congress people. they are bribing them. we are talking about lobbying against the health plan. so i think that the public -- because how many people are

part-timers, they work part time? and they do not get medical benefits. 95% of any retail store, retail company you go to, 95% of the employees are part-timers. they do not qualify for the health insurance and all those benefits. host: i appreciate you calling. back to "the wall street journal." "snedeker test pays for hospital performance." "a pilot project by medicare that links hospital payments to the quality of care has helped prevent infections in the money patients and cut death rates in heart attack patients, according to data to be released today. in the project, hospitals compete for cash incentives from medicare, the government insurance program for the elderly and disabled. on monday medicare officials are expected to -- three poor performance will be penalized." next call on the public option.

according to the new york times headline, go ahead, mike, go ahead. caller: thank you for having me as a guest. i would like to see if the guest would agree with me on something. the health bill, currently has scored by the congressional budget office, is somewhere about $1 trillion. is that correct? guest: that is about correct, yes. caller: ok. at this point, the congressional budget office spends approximately $13,000 a year, is what the annual insurance policy costs americans. if you take that amount -- and again, i disagree with the president in the fact that the

33 million -- or the 47 million figure that has been cited over and over again -- the president has gone as low as $33 million, and so have house democrats. if you pay that bill, $13,000 a year, per uninsured, you're still looking at $430 million. one trilli$1 trillion does not . they are being disingenuous with the facts, and i wish the media, the print media in particular, would be a little more t specific about the fact. guest: i think what the president has been saying and what the democrats have been saying is one of the reasons you make up for the cost is a savings through medicare savings and increasing efficiency.

that being said, the caller is not alone in being concerned about the actual cost to the cbo has gone higher than when dollar trillion in some estimates. there is some legitimate concern out there -- and then $1 trillion in some estimates. host: if the public option is not part of any final legislation, what does that do to a price tag? we know you are not cbo there, but what is your sense? guest: not only does it not bring down the costs inevitably, but it makes it politically palatable. it makes people who want to vote for any kind of political reform some cover because it says we took out the most expensive part. the two biggest areas of concern from members who want to vote for this had been the public option, government run

health care, as some call it, and the enormous price tag. by compromising on this portion, you really take both of those things out of the equation. host: here is another message from twitter. "the public option must be the foundation of health care reform. anything else is rearranging the titanic's deck chairs." to "the washington times," "it is too early in the debate whether they would support such a plan. a spokesman for senate majority -- senate minority leader mitch mcconnell, a kentucky republican, said it depends on how it's set up. if it is a government plan under a different name, it is not going to get support. it will be like having another fannie and freddie." michael steele, a spokesman for house majority leader john boehner, said there is a simple

-- there is concern that cost would simply be a gateway drug to government run health care." boston, you are up now. mary on the independent line. caller: i wanted to ask sam youngman and "washington journal" why you will not cover the single payer movement at all, why you never bring up john conyers bill, which has been around a couple of years and is widely popular, but largely also miss understood. host: what should we know about it? caller: is medicare extended to everybody. i do not think it is hard to understand as a public auction. guest: is not so much that i am disinclined to write about single payer, but when the president says flatly he is not in favor of the single payer system, that is when i felt like it was taken off the table.

host: david, democrats line, from pittsburgh, you are on the air. what is your reaction? caller: very, very upset about this public option even be considered -- even being considered non-essential. first of all, mr. obama, i am a democrat since 1980, 60 years old, a vietnam vet. i cannot believe it. i was pulling for you, i labored for you. under the republican regime, my house was stolen, my job was stolen, my wife's notion -- social security was stolen. recovery? we talk about recovery? what good are jobs that will levnever trickled down to the poor, as we are? and as they did, what good would it be to someone that is not healthy enough to work those

jobs? wise up, president obama. listen to me. you are labeled a flip-flop and now. do not be a wimp. host: here is another email. republicans may think they have won this battle. however, we sent president obama to the white house to do reform,. the 2010 elections are coming up and we are still here, we still want reform, and we will get it out and vote once more until all the luddites are gone and our voices heard." sandra, florida, republican line. caller: hello. i would just like to say, first of all, this is not about democrats and republicans. second of all, i am glad that mr. obama has listened to the majority of the people that really do not want this public option. it is socialized medicine, in a

sense. it does not work. canada, europe has proved that. i am disabled. i am on medicare. it is hard enough to find a good doctor. and it could treatment -- and get good treatment with a socialist program, and i'm going to have to stand in line, possibly not find doctors because they are going to be paid so little, it is not going to work. people do not understand. they think it is about democrats and republicans. host: a headlining "the new york times," "people think health plan may be dropped." east palo alto, california, continues the reaction. milton, on the independent line. hi there. milton, are you there?

caller: yes, i have a question for your guest. it seems like the white house message strategy is certainly failing in the initial stages of it. how do you feel the white house is good at adapting, particularly with the media? guest: i think this obama campaign was expert at -- how you transfer that to passing policies the way you got somebody elected? it does not seem to be nearly as effective. i would agree that they have lost control of the message strategy. that is why we have seen an increase of the town hall addresses he has been having. i do not know, this might be an sample of trying to put the

toothpaste back in the tube in trying to control the message. host: former democratic chairman howard dean is arguing that there can be no meaningful overhaul of the health care system without a public auction for coverage. a leading player in the parte's liberal wing, dean said in a nationally broadcast interview monday he thinks providing a government role in insurance coverage is fair. any reaction to howard dean's reaction? guest: not surprised in the least. in fact, if it goes forward the least it would be without the public option, he may even take a leadership role on with the anger we are hearing from your callers this morning. caller: what i never hear mentioned for the high price of health insurance, the larger amount of money is being spent on the machine, the technology.

my wife has staged four cancer. she just recently had four radiation treatments. they were $35,000 each, $135,000. a large amount of that money goes to pay for the rental of the machine, not the doctors or the technicians that are there. you are paying for who owns that machine. now, i say the government should be using government money to buy these machines as they do in other countries, and then we actually all own them because we are all part of it, and use them as necessary. the high cost of health care is because of the procedures, not the doctors, and it would be similar to if you had a fire in your house, the fire engine comes, puts the fire out, and then they give you a bill for $35,000 like the radiation treatment. so you would need to have fire

insurance to pay the fire company. we have socialism in the fire department. we have socialism and the police department. enter not have socialism in health care so that they can pay for the infrastructure -- the doctors and the people working, they make very little. i think if they did that they could even pay these other people more money that they complain doctors under medicare are not getting enough money. also the medicare system would be bolstered because when the seniors go for radiation they would not have the large fees to pay for whoever owns the machine. host: columbia, missouri, carl, what is your reaction on this? caller: 95% of the people calling in have one thing in common -- they want free health care and they want somebody else to pay for it. the government cannot give anybody a dollar without taking it from somebody else.

pretty soon the government is going to run out of other people's money and there will be nothing, so people need to stop and think that the government does not have the money. somebody has to pay for it, nothing is free. host: sam youngman, back to the present a pos's schedule. what happens in the interim in terms of the messaging from the white house, the administration, on health care? guest: i think we were expecting a couple more of events like we saw over the weekend with the town halls, but it looks like they will hunker down in washington, and i would imagine that the pettitte will be working from the town halls pretty intensely. the tone is set for the week in terms of what we will be discussing on the public auction. as we try to see how the white house uses this to try to pivot and get back control of the message board.

i am just curious what the second act is. host: there is also the broader economy. today's "usa today," story, " pulte: 57% do not see stimulus working." a usa today gallup poll found 57% of adults say the stimulus package is having no impact." guest: i think that has got to be the scariest number the democrats could be looking at right now. the president said that getting the stimulus program will take time to start working. the message they are starting to push right now is there are some indicators of the economy rebounding. the president has repeatedly said that the stimulus brought the country back from the brink of the great depression. that is the next battle they need to bring to the brink more than anything. host: richard on the line now

four independents. caller: government sponsored health care is a terrible idea, in the way that the veterans administration, u.s. post office, medicare, social security. we need to get the government out from between the patient and the health-care provider. also we need to get the insurance company out. it is like the doctor in new york who said he could do that 44for 400 or $500. government interference in the state -- if they could get that out and have a health care state in each plan, that is what we need.

host: bowie, maryland. connie on the democrat's lead. caller: hi. i think that people who want the public option should start calling their congressman and their senators and tell them if they want their vote that they need to vote for the public option. if not, we just will not vote people who are calling and saying that the public option will be free, that is not the way i understand it. it will just be a bigger pool of people in it, and it will help to bring the cost down so people can afford it. that is what people want on the public auction, is for everybody to have insurance, -- that is what people want on the public option, is for everyone to have insurance, affordable insurance. host: sam youngman, another chance to respond to some of the motion this morning from the

callers on this story. where do you think might be going? guest: i have really been surprised by it. it is a fascinating development. the one thing i will be very eager to see is what we see this highly publicized outrage around the country in the absence of a public option that we did with the presence of it? i will be curious how unified and allowed this voice is. host: hagerstown, maryland. richard, on the republican line. caller: talking about this health insurance, i am against it. i am a senior citizen now, and i am against this because i work for it. see, everybody is against the companies because they are making a fortune. we americans are proud democrats, republicans, and we work for a living. this is america, and this is the foundation of doing good for our country and working. see, people do not want to work.

this universal health care plan is, ok, a lot of people do not have insurance. i got married, i had a house, i worked for it, i got another job because the town did not pay too much. but it had good health insurance. dental, eye glasses, everything. but i worked for it. i have health insurance from the company and i made a little bit. everybody else was making a lot of money, but the health insurance was good so i kept it. the things that everybody is complaining about is how these companies are making a fortune. united healthcare -- i do not care about somebody else. as americans we should not care about somebody else. if the politicians are spending billions of dollars -- you have heard about these people -- host: koehler, are you still there? i think we lost that caller. ipod debt. josh, go ahead.

-- i apologize. josh, go ahead. caller: i am glad that the american people are waking up to the truth because they have been told in the past to not believe in conspiracies. but we told you before that a conspiracy is where the truth lies. i wish all the american people would get a book by john coleman, the author, called "the conspiracy on the hierarchy of the committee for 300." that explains a lot about the education, the racism, all of that created to keep america against each other. it is not about race, color. none of that. it is about class, and i am glad the american people are starting to wake up and realize their true fears. we are the government. separate the government from us and the american people.

host: more of the headlines today -- "obama may drop public insurer option." some more of the headlines include "leeland manager of constitution," which says, " white house may pull a public option." "compromise with gop could include health insurance cooperatives." "the miami herald," "white house may abandon public option." getting your reaction this morning -- michigan, randy, democrats line. hi. the head, michigan. caller: we need this public option more than anything, and what bothers me the most is i just believe the republicans do not want to share what they have been stealing their whole lives. you start back in the 1930's,

they had the farm bill. most of the ranchers and farmers are republican and have been eating at the public trough. we subsidize oil, coal, a lot of these republican jobs that our businesses. they just do not want to share. you have people on medicare, and that is a public auction. it public auction is not a terrible thing. the insurance companies have been taking this country for a ride for a long time, and that is why i fought for mr. obama, i am on the school board, and done it m -- and i am the only democrat against republicans. you ask anybody, the worse thing we have in this country is the health care coverage for the money. we do not need wars in iraq. if it can spend $1 trillion in iraq on a war, you can spend it on the american people. host: there are some upcoming

interesting events, including the events -- the elections in afghanistan. from "the financial times," " afghans fear: tax." 8 guest: we have seen defense secretary robert gates saying that we could be there for many years. it has become sort of an open- ended war, referred to by some as a "the forgotten war. definitely looking to see what happens in the elections, especially with the situation we had in iraq when people started going to -- there was great fear of suicide bombers at the polls, trying to prevent a young democracy from taking hold. i think the u.s. military will be keeping a close eye on what happens.

host: the egyptian president is also coming to washington. the headline in "the new york times," "egyptian president says president must make overture." guest: the president of course gave a major speech to the muslim nation, to the islamic nation from cairo, egypt. of course, it egyptian and other arab countries are going to press the president to reach out to israel to help some concessions as far as the peace process. host: mr. mubarak flew in over the weekend. he meets today with -- he meets with president obama tomorrow. syracuse, new york. thanks for waiting, brian, on the republican line. caller: good morning. the one thing that people do not seem to catch on is the health-

care system that we have right now is one of the best in the world. everybody admits that, but they keep saying that we have to wait in line to get health care. well, it is going to be even worse if there is a public auction because of -- a public auction because -- a public option because it would be shared. what is the word i am looking for? at any point, the biggest cost right now is health care insurance. people who sue doctors from minor mistakes who get millions of dollars -- that comes out of our pockets, and if you get rid of the people who get a single injury, that is a big health- care costs. from twitter, "we are lifelong

democrat and active supporters of the president. without a public auction, we would be crushed an angry." next, independent line, hi there. caller: yes, i want to comment that we do have government programs right now. the v.a. healthcare, medicare health care, medicaid, chips programs -- all of these are run by the government. everyone seems to be happy when they can draw from medicare or they get their v.a. benefits or their chips program. so all the poor people on medicaid, their problem with the health care they are getting -- they are fine with the health care they are getting. these people think that a government-run program is bad, but there are all these people that are proud to get their medicare when they turn 65 and

the disabled get their medicare. so they need to rethink this. and there does need to be a public plan for the rest of the people, and i think it will bring the health care costs down. but we are such a strong country, i do not think it will bring the quality of health care down. we will still be screaming for quality of health care. host: i appreciate you calling. just a couple minutes left with sam youngman of "the hill." what will you be looking for in the days ahead? guest: to see what the republican leadership and the house and senate have to say. i think we sought a story you mentioned earlier. right now they are being very cautious. did not want to come out and say they are adamantly opposed to anything -- they do not want to come out and say they are adamantly opposed to anything

the president is saying. clearly i think this goes a long way toward bringing them on board, and maybe even some left- leaning republicans. of course the final thing, engaging in the passion of some of the callers on the left. i will be curious to see how much they unify and how vocal they are in their disdain of the dropping of the public auction. host: a couple more calls on this topic, as part of the topic. big subject, health care. often, maryland, you are up now. caller: good morning. how are you this morning? firs of all, i am a democrat and i would like to take this opportunity. i could not hear you. host: we are just listening to you. keep going on.

caller: for sour like to thank this opportunity -- to take this opportunity to thank nancy pelosi. first there would like to thank nancy pelosi and barney frank. nancy pelosi, she was right at the beginning when the $750,000 -- $750 billion bill came out. she spoke out a three page letter that i thought was a -- she spoke out against a three page letter that i thought was a republican terrorist attack. when the cia parked all over again, she was right on that. again, thank you, nancy pelosi. .

caller: good morning. i happened longtime listeners. however, this morning, i was just compelled to call and on a couple of issues. number one, i heard a caller say that the health-care system is the best in the world. i am not going to say that it is not. i think it is a matter of access. it is the best in the world if

you can afford it. if you have access to it. absolutely. that is why saying that tiffany's is the very best, that is correct if you can afford to get it. i am speaking as a licensed medical social worker. i have seen this system at work. it does not work. i have heard enough of saying, if you just go to work, these people want something for nothing. that is absolutely untrue. there are millions of people in this country who get up, go to work each and every day to provide for themselves and their families and they do not have the luxury of having a basic benefit such as health care. host: it is it a little bit after 8:00 here in washington, d.c.. we have two hours left. coming up in a couple of

minutes, we will talk with jim martin, president of the 60 plus association. we will get an update from his organization on health care. we will also talk with philip alcabes. he is the author of a book that talks about the history of disease control in this country and around the world. now a news update from c-span radio. >> president obama turns his attention to military issues today as he continues traveling out west, stopping in phoenix this afternoon. he addresses the vfw about operations in iraq and afghanistan live coverage begins at 2:00 eastern time on c-span radio. north korea says today that its military is on special alert ahead of the south korean and u.s. military's annual simulated war games. they say that there maneuvers

are purely defensive. a u.s. relief team is in taiwan today, helping those stranded in mountain villages. an army spokesman says more than 200 people have been rescued so far today. local officials say at least 1000 people are still stranded. a human rights group says gay i recommend are being killed in an organized campaign that has spread from baghdad to several other cities human rights watch blames the crimes on shiite extremists. the death toll may be in the hundreds. there is word that an american civilian working alongside u.s. troops in afghanistan has been killed in a militant attack. a neda statement says that the civilian was in a patrol hit by enemy gunfire those are some of the latest headlines on c-span radio. >> this fall, enter the home to america's highest court from the grand public places to those only accessible by the nine

justices. the supreme court, the first sunday on october on c-span. >> this month, book-tv weekend to continue with more books on the economy, current events, and politics. tonight, chris andersen, and senate majority leader harry reid. >> as the health-care conversation continues, c- span's healthcare hobbs is an important resource. go online and follow the latest tweets, video advertisements, and links. keep up with town hall meetings, house and senate debate and even up low your opinion about health care with a citizen video. lobbying, influence, and money. have to use the internet to

provide transparency in government. tonight at 8:00 eastern time on c-span to. host: our guest now is jim martin, the founder of the 60 plus association here to talk to us about older americans that health care. when is your group's position on the bills that are out there right now? guest: the proposals that have been put forth, we say first, do no harm. let's not take a wrecking ball to a system that works very well for seniors. we say, do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. quite frankly, this bill is so large and so complicated and so misunderstood and misinterpreted, we have already seen improvements in the proposal, whether it is the public option, that the

president has backed away from. we think that is good. we do not think government run health care is the way to go there needs to be many things done to the current system. it is too expensive and too efficient -- too inefficient. host: what else are you worried about what it comes to seniors? guest: the cuts in medicare. these are massive cuts that have been proposed along to pay for the uninsured, the 40 million uninsured. there is a different set of numbers that are thrown out there from time to time. clearly, this is a plan that hertz seniors. let me make one very important point here. the president keeps talking about medicare, a government-run program. it is a government program and it is run by the government, but it is paid for by currency nears

and seniors to be. they paid in for 44 years. it has been in effect since 1965. seniors have paid their dues. they do not want to see cuts -- let me just quote from a couple of articles and the los angeles times, "the new york times," "the washington post." one says, congress is extracting $500 billion in medicare cost savings. to pay for health care reform. health care bill has -- calls for $500 billion in medicare cuts. this story did not say this. to offset the costs of insurance to 45 million uninsured people. what is that going to do? there will be more and more doctors stopping taking medicare patients. the american health association said the cuts could cripple the

hospitals possibility to care for patients. people say, $500 billion? that is what the newspaper headlines say. i like to look at the news sometimes. the fact is, the congressional budget office said, perhaps my estimate is low. they estimated would be another one under $16 billion. maybe we're talking $616 billion in medicare and medicaid costs. that upsets seniors. it makes them angry. you are seeing it now in the town hall meetings. this is democracy in action. host: let me ask our callers to enter and on the conversation. jim martin of the 60 plus association. we will get to your calls in just a minute. we will take one minute to look at an advertisement put out by

this organization, 60 plus association, the health-care issue. >> seniors have sacrificed, surviving the great depression, landing at normandy, raising strong families, and protecting our freedom in a dangerous world. in the most vulnerable period, seniors are being asked to sacrifice again. this will mean long waits for care. cuts to mri's, cat scans, and other vital tests. seniors may lose their own doctors. the government, not doctors will decide if they're worth the cost. the cruel joke here is that many of our politicians are designing a health-care plan for the country that they do not want to apply to themselves. congress could get better health care than the rest of us. tell congress, do not pay for

health care reform on the backs of our seniors. they have sacrificed enough. host: tell us more about what you would like to see in health care bill. >> i do not think there can be any reform until congress addresses the problem with tort reform. by that, i made the lawsuits that are thrown out left and right. it at great expense to the system. you have heard the terminology. a lot of doctors practice defensive medicine, if you will. they do too many tests. we all acknowledge that. why? they are trying to protect themselves from these lawsuits. when a doctor has to come up with $200,000 for insurance before the opens is sort of business, has not hired his first employee, we think this is wrong. clearly, that is one place to go.

we also think that there should be other reforms. it is a matter of choice and competition. what scares seniors now -- let me just go back to the fact of medicare. clearly, these seniors have paid in for 44 years. that is long -- that is how long the system has been in place. they do not want to see a system in their twilight years to pay for more uninsured let me point out the other thing that people comment on. that is the federal employee health benefit plan 31.6 million federal workers are on that. so, we're saying -- let me point out, those who say that the republicans are for the status quo, i notice it is a lot of democrats -- the democrats control the house and the

senate. a lot of the democrats are blocking a lot of these proposed -- these proposals. a lot of republicans have come forward with a lot of plans. center mcconnell has said -- i think congressman heller of nevada, they offered a plan and said, our plan -- if this plan you are offering to the public now is so good, let's put ourselves on it. that plan was defeated on a party-line vote. host: jim martin of the 60 plus association, on our line for democrats. >caller: good morning. i am over 60.

i'm retired. i am on medicare. i therefore -- i pay for my medicare through a monthly deduction to my social security. i also pay for supplemental health care. my medicare deduction is $96 a month. i received $13,000 a year from medicare. i live on an additional $5,000. i am not a wealthy senior. i also happen to be retired. i am very familiar with the tragedy is that people go through by not receiving health care at all.

i am for a public auction. i see it as bringing down the cost of health care. i would like to ask mr. martin, who funds your organization? other than donations? guest: i am surprised to get that question this early, but i'm glad to answer it. we have over a quarter million concerned citizens around the country that have donated to us throughout the 17-year history of the 60 plus association association. i know that upsets some of the colors and some who send e-mail and phone calls. we're not funded by the insurance lobby or the pharmaceutical lobby. i think a lot of those who are now finding the obama health care plan. again, we are funded by individuals. we have had some business donations through the years, but

our funds come from concerned citizens. 270,000 individual donors fund us. these are voluntary donations, unlike the other large senior's group that receives about $1 billion of your tax dollars. we do not accept taxpayer dollars. host: you are on the air. hello. caller: i just wonder why we have not thought of something about emigration. if we resolve some of our immigration laws that are on the book, that would solve the health-care problem. guest: we have not taken a position on immigration. there are other issues to get involved in without getting into such a contentious issue.

i will point out that former president george bush when he was the governor of texas, he tried to touch that issue and of course, there was a great outcry from all over the country from mainly people on the right, the conservatives. it has been a very contentious issue. people now bring it up in context of health care. that is a legitimate reason to bring it up. again, we're talking 47 million. there are a number of issues out there. this one is very contentious. the illegal immigrants or the undocumented workers, 13 million -- nobody knows the number. let's use that for a second. if you take that out of the 46 million, you take out the 20 million young people who do not

really care about insurance at this point, they are not susceptible to injury -- when i was a young marine, i felt the same way growing up. there are clearly low-income people, not just senior citizens that i am always concerned about, but younger workers coming up, low-income people around the country that need some sort of help. that is 10 million. we're not talking 47 million. that is a more -- that is a number that can be dealt with, i think financially. let's have some sort of safety net. let's have some sort of tax credits for the low-income people to help out. how do you go about putting 47 million people onto a system that is already financially straining at the seams? but there is already a nursing

shortage. we did a study in our magazine over a year ago about a nurse shortage already here. there is a doctor shortage coming. somebody did the math the other day. if you had a 47 million people and if you have 100 doctors per -- 100 patients per doctor, you are going to need another 470,000 doctors to come into the system. a lot of doctors are leaving the medicare program because of the lower payments. if these cuts come about, even more doctors will leave the system. host: jim martin is the president of 60 plus association. richard, thank you for waiting. caller: i have a question that really applies to both parties. we can look of the patriot act

and this current act that is high pressure to be pushed through to the point where either party is using this high pressure tactic to get their issue across. the point being, congressman never see it until the last minute -- they did not see the patriot act. they had not read this one. this is one of the big arguing points. the question that comes out of this is, they have addressed to the bill. who wrote them? who buy individual name organization sat down and proposed these bills like the patriot act that appears within two days of 9/11? guest: a very good question. i would like an answer to that myself. senior citizens are saying one thing. read the bill. read the bill before you come forth and start outlining what is in it. it is a travesty, if you will.

i came to washington in 1962 as a newspaper reporter. i covered congress when john f. kennedy was in the white house. i covered congress for a couple of years and i worked on the hill. i have seen a lot of contentious issues come before the public and before congress. there was the civil rights bill back in the 1960's that finally got through. medicare in 1965. i remember very well, president lyndon baines johnson flying to independence missouri and giving the first medicare card to former president harry truman. the fact is, this is the most contentious issue i have seen in all of my 47 years in this town, including the civil rights bill, which was a major issue in the

1960's. clearly, the language has been so ambiguous in this proposal that that is why people are concerned, whether it is the so- called and of life proposal, whether it is the public option, which both are out of the bill and have been deleted. take out that public option provision. why? it is so ambiguous and it is causing concerns on both sides. it causes concern among older americans. that has been deleted. at least senator grassley said in iowa, democracy in action. he said that will not happen. i applaud seniors for that. a lot of people are getting credit for that being taken out.

the old saying by ronald reagan, if you do not care who gets the credit, you get a lot done. and i would like to think senior citizens. maureen dowd said, those people showed up our old and white. i have news for you. you are going to be old and we welcome you to our ranks. host: david sloan of aarp was on the program last week and he talked about some myths of the health-care reform. guest: there is a tremendous amount of mythology about what this health reform bills seem to do. we're trying to make clear to people that this bill, whether it is the house bill that is being worked on or the senate bills, are not going to result in socialized medicine.

they are not going to result in a government takeover. they are not going to result in euthanasia. all of these comments that have been made really twist and distort what this legislation seeks to do. host: he says that there are a lot of myths out there about all of this. guest: i was on the program right before david. quite frankly, that is very reassuring to have the aarp reassure us that these are not in the bill. i think the aarp is slipping and sliding because quite frankly, our phone lines have been melting down the past few days with callers calling and and saying how they can join the 60 plus association. i am not me to pick a fight with aarp, but they have been picking

a fight with me for about 16 years or 17 years. they get a lot of tax dollars. that is quite all right. they are a fortune 500 company that is hawking a lot of products. they clearly have a big government agenda. that is fine, but i do not think you should use tax dollars to promote your agenda. i think they got their comeuppance at a town hall meeting out in dallas where some lady from the aarp said, we do not have a political agenda, but a lot of people in that room ofbooing. clearly, they have an agenda. it is big government, more taxes -- that is why i started this organization to counter the big government, left-of-center -- people often say, you are part of the radical right.

if that is the case, i do not mind getting that, as long as my detractors admit that they are part of the left. host: let's hear from new york. caller: good morning. we need a public option. we need some competition. we already have many public auctions in place and people before have mentioned. i am very upset that there is any talk about taking out of the table. i have been a nurse for 12 years. i experienced a lot of situations where people who had health care are refused coverage by standards set up by the insurance companies. we already have that. we already have the things that people are talking about that we will have -- the terrible things. our insurance system has operated behind closed doors. people do not know what is behind those doors and how things actually run or what

those costs are. we need a public option. we need that public auction and competition to bring costs into line. guest: the lady should call up or start lobbying howard dean, head of his group. there are very upset, the liberal wing of the democratic party, because of the dropping of the public option. howard dean, i can almost hear him screaming out about it now. his group even jumped on senator ben nelson of nebraska, a moderate democrat. i'm pretty sure that ben nelson is from florida, do. we say, do not overheat your rhetoric. i have got to say this. while we are getting hundreds and thousands of folks wanting to join 60 plus association, i noticed a shift a few days ago

when organizing for america, david axelrod with his 13 million email list, let's start a changain letter of emails. clearly, the calls to our office -- when they call up and cuss you out, as a former marine, i can handle that. when they talk about, i hope you get cancer to some of our people in that office -- what goes to threats -- we have had death threats now. we got one in email form. we turned that over to police. that is not democracy in action.

that is disruption, if you will. i am being kind when i say that. we could go on and on who is right into is wrong. clearly, this is an issue that has gotten everybody's attention here in the summer months, especially in august. let me say this. having worked on capitol hill, i would like to tell congress, read the bill. i have news for congress. there is a senior tsunami headed toward capitol hill. politics can always be subject to changes. clearly, and less that subsides, there is going to be political pain to pay at the pump -- at the polling places next november, 2010. that is my message to congress.

host: bonnie is on the republican line. caller: i have a comment. the first thing our governor of maryland -- $23 million in medicare rates to nursing homes. $23 million to hospitals -- my question is, now the president blames the insurance companies. if we put the insurance companies out of business and we cannot pay for this medicaid -- we cannot afford it now. what happens when the insurance companies are out of business and the government cannot afford the medicaid and health care? what are we going to do? guest: that is a very good question.

the governor of tennessee has pointed out, this medicaid system is the mother of all unfunded mandates. cuts to that impact seniors, especially low-income seniors, who are on medicaid. i would like to add one other thing. the smokescreen put up by aarp and the pharmaceutical companies -- they are going to spend $150 million. $150 million is a huge chunk of change. we would like to know where some of that is coming from. mr. sloan said, we have the american medical association. i have news for you more than 80% of doctors do not belong to the ama. who are they speaking for?

so, it is a matter of whose [ analogy] is being used out there. host: jim martin of the 60 plus association, we appreciate your time this morning. we will take a short time out and then be back with some of your calls on the health-care issue. >> this fall, walk into the home of the nation's highest court. the supreme court, coming the first sunday in october on c- span.

>> this month, book-tv we can't continue all week with more books on the economy and politics. tonight, chris andresen and senate majority leader harry reid. as a health-care conversation continues, the health-care hall is an important resource. xkeep up with events like town hall meetings, events, even up load your opinions with citizen video. the c-span health care hub at c- span.org/healthcare. >> lobbying, influence, and money. the director of the sunlight foundation on how using the internet can provide transparency to government.

host: we thought we would get more of your phone calls for these next 25 minutes on the theme that we had at top of the program. it had to do with these headlines today. the public option in the health plan may be dropped. that is an "the new york times." it is a sign of compromise. the health secretary says it is not the essential element. what house is facing increasing skepticism over president obama's plan. it signaled sunday it was going to compromise and nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the senate. we have lines for democrats or republicans, and independencts. an important feature of the obama health plan may be out. the administration hints that the public option is not the only way to go. kathleen sebelius, the health

and human services committee was on one of the morning shows yesterday. >> the president continues to believe that it is good to have consumer choice, let people choose an option in the new marketplace. it is good to have competition for the private insurers who will inherit a lot of new customers and without competition, costs could skyrocket and a monopoly system is not a good way to hold down costs. he continues to be supportive of options for consumers. we did not know exactly what the senate finance committee is likely to come up with. they have been more focused on a co-op, a not-for-profit co-op as a competitor as opposed to a straight government-run program. i did what is important is choice and competition. i am convinced the plan will have both of those. that is not the essential element.

host: this is reaction from howard dean. he is arguing there can be no meaningful overhaul of health care system without a public auction for coverage. referring to the public health option, you said that you cannot do health care reform without it. loss of your calls this morning so far on this. we will continue to take them now from lexington, ky. hello. >> good morning. host: what is your reaction? caller: it is in directly relate to what you're talking about. the public has to say, i do not think they are adequately informed in a few areas. i actually work in health care. i have not heard a lot of statistics come out in a meaningful way. about 36 cents of every health care dollar goes towards the

administration of health care. these are not people who do the work. these are people to exchange the cash in the middle. the stuff about death panels and the like, it is much worse here than in canada and other places. i have been situations where we bring patients in who cannot afford it. we send them out and we cannot bring them out and they go to the nearest emergency room repeatedly. those costs are unbelievable. we create this cycle. i do not think that the terms i keep hearing about things such as liberal agenda -- the use the term agenda. we talk about big government. ultimately, right now, i don't

think the public realizes that we need big government. host: thank you. your up on the line for democrats. what is your reaction to the story this morning? caller: i am very disappointed with the president kowtowing to the blue dogs of the single payer system. -- excuse me, on the public option. if we do not have that, we will have nothing to balance out the incredible power of the insurance companies. there already are death penalty. they're run by the private insurance companies permit the gentlemen you had on from 60 plus association, he danced around the issue, but his organization from a nonpartisan group shows that it is nothing more than a front group for the drug companies. they fought against bills in new mexico and minnesota that would

bring down drug prices for those health care programs in those days when the states are trying to buy drugs in bulk. host: here is a headline in "the washington times." health and human services committee chairman says that the obama administration is willing to accept a health care proposal that includes nonprofit health insurance cooperatives rather than insist on a government-run insurance program. if you look at "did your daily news," this morning, reading the health care tea leaves. the obama administration signaled yesterday that it may ditch the so-called public option in its bid to get health care reform alive. senator kent conrad is quoted as saying -- he was on the morning

shows as well yesterday morning and talked about those in the senate and the public option. >> there are not the votes in the united states senate for the public option. that is why i was asked to come up with an alternative. i want to make a tweak. it is not a public plan at all in the sense that the government runs it. the government has nothing to do with it once it is established. it is run by the members. >> it would put up some of the seed money, right? >> yes. there is a requirement to have reserves for any new health insurer. the idea is that the government would front end some of the money and we have yet to discuss whether all of that or some of

that gets paid back. there would be that amount of involvement. it would be membership-run and membership-controlled. the government would not have any ongoing publication for any control. host: a spokesman for several ranking congressional republicans said that while the concept of a health-care co-op has merit, it's too early in the debate to say whether they would support such a plan. a spokesman for senate minority leader mitch mcconnell said it depends on how it is set up. if it is a government plan under a different name, it is not going to get support. he was referring to the troubled government-sponsored companies that help to guarantee half of the nation's mortgages. you are on the independent line. hello. caller: good morning.

my point is this. european countries already have public health insurance. the one country this is closest to in terms of our government is canada. they have had public health insurance for several years i do not hear people running around desperate and raising cain about that. i do not know if it -- why in the greatest country in the world [inaudible]

i do not understand it. host: sue on the republican line. hello there. are you there? caller: hello. i am not exactly sure what the public option is about. we voted for them to go up to washington, d.c. and do the best that they can for all of the people here in the united states. not to be a democrat, not to be a republican, not to be an independent, but sponsor the people of the united states. therefore, i wish they would quit fighting and get on with their work and make the best that there is for all of us. host: we will scans a more of the headlines on the story. here is "the atlanta journal

constitution." the public option is not deemed essential. a compromise could include health insurance cooperatives. obama may drop the public insurance option. is open to nonprofit cooperative started a little bit more reaction on the idea of a co- op, more from the washington times this morning. it is a spokesman for john boehner. he added, it is hard to comment on a proposal no one has seen. a spokesman for senator chuck grassley of iowa says the senator is interested in the co- op approach, though she added that it all depends on details and how things unfold. hello. caller: good morning.

i'm a 68-year-old man. most of the republicans that are complaining about the public option are seniors. seniors who are ignorant to the fact about government health care. they have it. they are willing to die to keep it. let's assist them in -- their time is over and so is republican rule. host: thank you. we have some republican reaction to all of this. in lieu of their reaction to the other side of the aisle apprentices from a democrat from texas reacting to the news that came out >> did you support a health care measure that does not have a robust public option? >> it would be very difficult. without the public option, we will have the same number of people uninsured.

if the insurance companies wanted to ensure these people now, they would be insured. the only way that we can be sure that very low-income-people and people who work for companies that do not offer insurance can have access to it is through an option that would give the private insurance companies a little competition. the private insurance companies have been in charge so long that i think they feel that nobody should be able to do it. host: little rock, arkansas. what is your reaction to the story this morning? caller: i heard howard dean. he says it is still in the house bill. he says he believes in the bill that it will still be in it. i think it should stay. host: your on the republican line. good morning.

caller: the insurance companies are being vilified because they are in business. they have had a tremendous effort on keeping expenses back. the government does not seem to be able to keep expenses back on anything. if they do not keep the insurance companies and their somehow, -- i am not for insurance companies, but i point out that they have done a good job keeping back expenses. medicare and all of the public health insurance, anything that the government is involved with such as the post office, they did not do a good job of keeping expenses back because they have unlimited funds and they can always get more funds when they needed. it seems to me that the insurance companies have to be in there somewhere. maybe if you have more control put on them or tweak their jobs.

host: speaking of the insurance companies, "the wall street journal, quote writes about all of this from that perspective. wellpint operate lacrosse and blue shield plans in 14 states and the dozens of other not-for- profit blue plans across the country. they are the biggest sellers of individual health policies, the kind that would compete with new public co-op plans. they have less to lose from a public plan, as the market mostly to employers. silver spring, maryland is on line for democrats. are you there? caller: i would like to comment on the co-op plan. that plan -- the only non-profit part is the patience, or what

they like to call customers -- they are just pulling together the existing insurance companies that exist. there's no insurance requirement within that option at all. we just try to get a better rate from these giant insurance companies that are very expensive for us to buy from. people will still be going bankrupt from insurance companies. host: let's here from boston now. hello, norman. >> i thought one of the biggest complaints was that there would be medical rationing under the obama plan. i think that even with the

dropping of the public plan, that provision still applies. it does not seem to make much difference if there is a public plan or not, because the medical rationing still persists. am i correct in saying that? host: what else would you like to add? hoslet's move on. caller: 4 you doing? -- how redoiare you doing and? caller: the republicans make me ashamed. they are on the pay off and everybody knows that they're getting paid off by the insurance companies. let's look at the record and show how much money they are getting from insurance companies. remember we have a constitutional right to bear arms.

we have a right to use them against a repressive government. host: here is another twitter message. the reason we put obama in office is not to hear from these horrible gop people again. we want our side heard for once. alice is on the line for democrats. caller: hello. this is the first time i have never gotten through. i am excited. i am also extremely disappointed at the thought that the public option will be dropped. it is devastating. i cannot believe that the republicans are still in charge of our government. i do not know how on earth this has happened. host: what do you mean by that? we saw the clip from senator conrad saying that there just aren't enough votes in the senate for this.

caller: items do not think they are trying. i think they are kowtowing to the blue dogs and the republicans. it seems like any time you watch television now, it is just saturated with critics, right- wing critics of the health plan. they are calling it death panels and all kinds of things. it is just ridiculous. host: what kind of criticism are you expecting moving forward from the left side of the aisle? caller: i do not know. i am so upset about this. i do not know if i will vote in the next election. i am that upset about it. host: obama officials hedge on overhaul. we're looking at "the philadelphia inquirer." if the government insurance could be dropped in favor of a co-op model.

competition is still key. here is "the wall street journal." the white house opens door to compromise on the government role in health-care overhaul. go ahead, please. caller: we already have public health care. it is called welfare. you have 350 million people that have insurance. you have 50 million people that do not have insurance. why don't we get rid of the insurance companies, which everybody likes and give it free to the 50 million wetbacks and people who just do not want it. host: a new plan floated for health care.

if we look at "the chicago tribune," obama backs of the public option. cooperatives are one alternative for insurance plan. the loss angeles times, the white house backs off of public health option. obama and other officials said that it is not essential. you can see a picture of the obamas at the grand canyon. the family went to the grand canyon. some of the family also what whitewater rafting. the president will make a speech to the vfw in phoenix, arizona. and we will bring you that later on air. you can catch that later today.

hagerstown, maryland, kathleen, on the republican line. caller: i do not think the man was a real republican. he just sounded like he was not telling the truth. i would like to comment, first of all, that the death care stuff started because in the bill, it talks about a secretary being created that has to come up with certain rules and regulations. i do not have them in front of me. then they will set up metrics. it all deals with and of life. when it says facilities that do not meet their metrics because -- i was going to ask them about that in maryland, but i did not

have a chance. i think the public option is just going to be a way to try to get their foot in the door to get the public option that they want, whatever it is that they are calling it today. i think it is just a smokescreen. people are really upset. i see a lot of people around -- i am a retired schoolteacher. people are very upset. a lot of older people are upset. i'm very upset that the president and democrats making fun of a lady who wrote in and said, i do not want socialized medicine, but do not touch my medicare. everybody laughs at that woman. she is right. she did not want socialized medicine for her family and her grandchildren. she also did not want medicare cuts and people to be denied benefits. that is what is happening. my aunt just died from a stroke.

she fell down at exercise clause. a center to the hospital right away. they did surgery to stop the hemorrhaging. she will end up being in the statistics. look at how much money we spent in the last year for life. when you look at statistics, statistics can prove anything. host: administration officials say that kathleen sebelius misspoke when she told cnn this morning that the government-run health insurance option is not an essential part of reform. this official asked not to be identified in exchange for providing clarity. officials said that the white house did not intend to change its messaging.

it is not in the president paz view, the most important element of the reform package. we will see if there is more clarifications coming out of the white house on all of this. hello, ed. go ahead. caller: they should go back to the way they used to be. give medicare to the people who need it. that is the way it used to be. my second point is that they should start making -- one guy said, the insurance companies -- it is the doctors. i have a piche3d nerve in my

back. i have gone to all kinds of doctors and all kinds of tests. i had to go to the mayo clinic to find out how i got a pinched nerve in my back. they should pay all of this stuff back. if they cannot find out what is wrong with me -- i have to go to the mayo clinic to find out what is wrong. they should pay this stuff back. host: steve on the independent line. your reaction to the stories today? caller: i find it very interesting that the it ministration is now changing its story from yesterday. whenever they start to get push back, that is when they change their story. as a retired person, i get to watch too much tv. i watch all of the president's town hall meetings. i never hear any commitment to

look at tort reform. the president promises that there will be no increases in cost and there will be no lessening of services. i think the main driver should be tort reform, but unfortunately, that is nowhere in the plan. i think that is for political reasons. it just drives me crazy. .

host: we will also talk with philip alcabes, author of "dread." is part of our arthuauthor seri. >> a delegation of u.s. senator s led by john mccain are meeting with the president of yemen to talk about ways to help the country fight the threat from al-qaeda. the state news agency says that talks are focusing on bilateral issues and fields of joint cooperation, including counter- terrorism. the delegation has been on the middle east trip since last week, also stopping in libya and iraq. in addition to senator mccain,

senator lieberman. a new approach is called for to dealing with burma. this weekend, he secured the release of an american and met with the country's detained democracy leader. the nobel peace laureate said she would not oppose the lifting of some u.s. sanctions on them. some lawmakers are looking ahead to next year's elections. the hill reports that 30 candidates have spent at least $100,000 of their own money on their campaigns for house or senate. that is nearly twice as many as the 16 who had done so at this time in the 2008 election cycle. in texas, senator kay bailey hutchison kicks off her campaign for governor with a five-day tour that includes all the major texas cities and three border towns. she was elected to the senate in

1993 and will now talent gov. rick perry in next year's march primary. new york democratic yorknadler says president obama should not keep eric holder from appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the bush administration's interrogation practices. those are some of the latest headlines on c-span radio. >> "washington journal" continues. host: from new york city, philip alcabes, author of "dread." let's get right to it. early in the book, you write that epidemics fascinate us.

host: give it your best shot. describing an epidemic for us. what is it? how should we look at? guest: bitan epidemic is always a story that a society tells itself about a disease outbreak or the threat of a disease outbreak. sometimes we talk about epidemics that do not qualify as diseases in the classical sense. for instance, we talk about an epidemic of obesity nowadays. 10 years ago, we were talking about an epidemic of road rage. those do not seem like diseases in the classical sense, if you think about the plague or colorists. it is a story we tell about a social crisis. maybe that is the best way to put its. host: you also say that epidemics create opportunities to convey messages.

host: this is right at the front of the book. explain more. guest: it often seems to be true that when we face a social problem, when we do not know how to deal with it, we do not know what the best way is to make it go away. we handed over to the public health industry. the way we do that is by calling it an epidemic. i gave an example a minute ago about rage. when people in the 1980's were concerned about what was happening with children in day care centers. you might remember the hysteria about the satanic ritual abuse. more seriously, there has been a continuing problem about domestic violence. that was considered a police problem for a long time. later, it became a public health

problem. i think that we sometimes call things epidemics because we want to hand them over to the public health apparatus. on the other hand, there are real disease outbreaks, like swine flu. host: the author is philip alcabes. u.s. policy for disease control, the main topic here, and we have separate lines for democrats, republicans, and independents. fear and fantasy, you spent a long period of time. it is quite a span of history. what is most common in all of that history about epidemics?

tell us more about the reaction to them. guest: the most common thing is dread. we bring our fears to the way we look at the world around us. those fears are complex. there are lots of pieces to them. the innate dread of death, destruction, and social disintegration is part of it. there's more. there are anxieties that we have about the world. we see an epidemic coming, or someone tells us that one is coming, and we often imagine that this disease outbreak is telling us that we were right to be afraid. in the 19th century, cholera was the emergencing infectious

disease of the day. it had never been seen in western europe or the united states. in the second quarter of the 19th century, in 1831-1832, it caused a terrible outbreak. it came back a few times. the discussion about cholera was always a layered with the social issues of the day. part eagerly toward the irish, who were both in england and ireland. if you read what people were writing about cholera in those days, it was often about the habits of the irish, or about immigration. cholera has nothing to do with speed irish or immigration. it is a waterborne disease caused by bacteria. but in all the discussion, there was a reflection of the social

anxieties' of that day. host: more of the words of our author. the first call for philip alcabes, author of "dread" is from the list, minn.. caller: good morning. this is a great guest. this ties in with the previous guest and the callers, but also in swine flu. in the top people were having about blaming the mexicans yes, all the fear in people.

just afraid of didying. guest: and afraid of plenty of other things. we have our worries about modern life. swine flu is a great example. i wish i could have written this book a few months later. i could have included a lot more interesting information about how we have responded to an incipient epidemic. as the caller mentioned, at the beginning, there were lots of concerns about mexicans. i heard in late april, a reporter from chicago told me that there have been soccer games between the mexican team and another team. people were boycotting the games because they did not want to go near mexicans. a typical response, alas, that some foreigner has done this to

us. it is not mexicans that bros one flew to america. -- it is not that mexicans brought swine flu to america. as the caller suggested, those kind of anxiety ies come out. host: middletown, new york, republican caller. caller: they have proven that this swine flu outbreak was developed -- it does not have the pedigree. it has traces of human, swine flu, and bird flu. they tested it on the ferrets and the ferrets died. they called back and said they never radiated it. they said they gave homeless people in poland the test vaccine and people died.

i was in the army in 1976 in the first outbreak at a military base. it always happens in military bases. like the doctor that says they're going to reduce the world population by 80% and we need another type of 1918 pandemic. they want to reduce the world population. it is all out there if anybody wants to read. thank you. host: thank you. philip alcabes, any reaction? guest: i have heard some, but not all of those rumors about swine flu and its origin. the investigation was done on where the strain of h1n1 came from. it was conclusively determined that it did not come out of a laboratory.

there's an article that was published about six weeks ago with the pedigree of the virus. i can neither recalled to the pedigree or the name exactly when the article came out, but it showed pretty clearly, as the caller suggested, this h1n1 virus has genetic pieces that come from viruses that have infected different species, including pigs and birds. we do not have to imagine some malevolent laboratory worker putting this together. this is what happens in nature. genes of flu viruses recombined. sometimes come across species. this seems to have evolved in a complicated way, but not a naturunnatural.

the caller brought up the 1976 outbreak. that is important and relevant. in 19676, there was concern based on a few cases of h1n1 that seemed to come from a pig virus that was isolated from recruits at fort dix in, new jersey. it became the basis for a nationwide vaccination campaign. in the end, there was no widespread outbreak. there were about 230 cases among recruits. there were 300 cases in greater new jersey. there was no big help break of swine flu. -- there was no big outbreak of swine flu. there was a nationwide vaccination campaign, which seems to have caused some cases of a syndrome. 1976 is probably relevant to our

experience now, although, we are not sure exactly how. the caller mentioned an allegation that eugenicists want to reduce the world's population. if so, a flu virus would not be a good way to do that. the very worst flu outbreak of all time was in 1918, sometimes erroneously called the spanish flu. that killed maybe 600,000 people in the u.s. that means that over 99% of the american population survived it. that, the worst pandemic of all time. something to keep in mind. even what seemed like a really terrible outbreaks to do not to diminish the population by that much.

host: our guest was educated at union college and also cal berkeley, colombia, johns hopkins. philip alcabes is also an associate professor at the colleges of school of health sciences in new york city. philip alcabes, author of "dread." as we look back in history, picking up with the black death itself, as far as the dread goes, how did that dread, how the communication, how did anxiety manifested self in those days? how did it change in the hundreds of years? guest: we are talking about black ducks, which was in the middle of the 14th century. it came to europe and the 13 forties. -- came to europe in the 1340s.

in five years, it killed a quarter or more of the european population. they played was not brand new. it had happened before. it had even happen before in europe. at that time, it was well of the memory of anyone who was alive in your plan the 1340s the previous outbreak was over 600 years before. it had circulated in the area that would be central asia now. it had not come to europe for all the time. when it did come, as you might imagine, for a disease that was killing a quarter of the townspeople, it was terrifying. there's a really classic example of the way that a coming of a disease outbreak galvanized fears that people had about society at the time. one of the horrible things that

happened -- the countries that we know of them now did not exist. it would be the western part of germany and parts of france in part of belgium and the netherlands. the massacre of jews. it was a very christian time. christianity itself was changing. people had their anxieties about that. when the plague can, townspeople in dozens of towns massacred jews. they said it was a way of warding off the plague. for that time, the massacres stopped. every law the fears and -- there were a lot of fears and unrest about the way society was changing. the end of feudalism, the growth of towns, and the changes in the

church came out of this very dark picture. host: lexington, ky on the democrats' line. your honor with philip alcabes. good morning. caller: good morning. i'll understand that fleas from rats cause black dust. what do we have to fear about fleas from domestic animals? guest: yes, the caller is correct that plague can be spread by fleas. it is normally a disease of small mammals. often prrodents. nowadays, it can be found in a

wild rodents. that is the most common reservoir in the western hemisphere. the radical, a flea that has been jumping from rodent to rodent that happens to land on the human could transmit the plague to a human. very few cases of plague in the u.s. every year. a handful. it is a bacterial infection. it is treatable with antibiotics. i do know that it is not a big public health worry. that is partly because it is treatable. we do not have the same ecological arrangements that erupted in the -- that europe did in 1340's.

rat species is different. the entire is logical system is different now. i am not sure if i have answered the question about fleas in particular. if you what can be in a place where there was wild rodents known to harbor the plague, your physician might advise you to come in for care if you have symptoms. it is rare. host: the next call is from mark on the independent line from california. caller: and was concerned about the origins of some of these diseases and whether or not a biological researcher may be involved in this. for instance, most people may recall the panic that occurred when aids was right been

the nation. two people initially came forward and said they knew what the disease was. the french person wrote a book about aids. in the book, he said that he believed that aids as it is in africa was likely brought to africa by u.s. homosexuals who contracted the disease here from research that was going on in new york and places like that, and then took the disease to africa. this is one of the discoverers of the disease who said this. this is not some sort of crackpot. when he said that jews were often executed when diseases started to spread. this was also true in germany. most people might be surprised to learn that -- hitler talks

quite a lot about disease. and makes the connection between jews and syphilis and homosexuals. guest: let me try to break this down. there have been a number of allegations that the aids virus may have come from a laboratory. that is almost certainly not the case for the main reason that the state of knowledge about molecular biology in the late 1970's when the aids virus started to produce the disease that we now call aids was not sufficiently advanced to create a virus that is at dispatthis sophisticated. the allegation that americans

brought aids to africa -- american and european scientists believe that the virus that causes aids originated in africa. africans believed it originated in the u.s. for quite some time. this is a fairly common phenomenon. everybody thinks the terrible epidemic came from someone else. it is so ancient a phenomenon that the ancient greek historian wrote that when the plague of athens cam around 430bc, the people said they came from africa bill that goes on today. -- came from africa. that goes on today. like an earlier caller said, people like to believe swine flu came from mexicans. from a historical standpoint, it has to be looked at with the

circumspect from. there's abundant evidence that the aids viruses -- there are several different related types -- evolved from pre-existing viruses of chimpanzees that had been living in africa. that seems to be the most overwhelming evidence. i'm not sure the georgian matters. -- i am not sure the origin matters. as for the aspect of homosexual lobby, it is important to remember that the aids virus has nothing to do with homosexuality. its job is to move from person to person so that it can keep on producing more jr. aids viruses. host: our guest is philip alcabes, author of "dread."

we are taking calls on u.s. policy for disease control, and also learning more about the history of disease control. when did disease control become a reality? what part of history? how did it work in the early days? guest: i imagine the horrord that occurred during the black death. at the same time, people were launching quite cogent disease control measures. quarantine, for instance, was essentially invented or at least begin policy very early on in the plague years, in the 14th century, and became institutionalized soon thereafter. that was quite a long time ago. the idea of what is called the

sanitary cordon, wally off your town, not allowing visitors in. but also began early on -- that also began early on. of course, disease control has evolved and changed with the advent of germ theory, modern technology, vaccination, antibiotics administration. but the basics of disease control, isolating the contagious, is quite old. host: there's a photo in "the washington times" of children getting hand sanitizer. the point of the whole story is that schools are preparing for swine flu. kids will be first in line for vaccinations. how does it work today? how well does disease control work, beginning here in the

united states? guest: disease control can be extremely effective, especially in the developed world where there's money to put into it. and the u.s. response to swine flu seems to me to be both circumspect, but evidence based, straightforward. i think there was a little bit of panic at times. schools will probably kohl'wered that did not need to be closed. i really have to credit the cdc for keeping people informed in the wake that seemed to be designed to naught fomenting hysteria. in developing countries, disease control can be very carefully

administered. again, in developed countries, we put a fair amount of funding into disease control. some people will say not enough, but much more than poor countries. there's a big problem there. you are probably aware that with the likelihood that there will be a vaccine available against swine flu sometime this fall, the question arises -- what countries should have access? should the united states and europe be able to buy up the vaccine because we can't afford it? what about the poor countries? host: in the financial times -- more calls for our guests. republican line, john. gcaller: i am really happy

that you have this man on here. it is so nice to see somebody intelligent on c-span talking about something intelligent. i have a couple questions. my favorite book of all times is a book called "a short history of nearly everything." it has so much interest in step about science. people should just educate themselves and read more. when i was in elementary school, which was about 35 years ago, i remember people came around and gave us some kind of vaccine. i do not know if anybody does that anymore. i wonder why. why don't we quarantine groups of people when we think that

they have something that can spread to the rest of everyone? guest: thank you for the complement. why don't we quarantine people? a lot of the blast this. why don't we shut the borders when there is wind klooswine fl. the chinese are a big quarantiners. they locked down the chinese university 43 victory people had to bring food to the students. -- locked down a chinese university for 3 weeks. people have to bring food to the students. they cordoned off a village in the western part of the country where there have been a small outbreak. that is still a possibility.

it does not really seem to work very well except if you note exactly who needs to be quarantined and you can be a really good at it. to our credit, we try to develop disease control systems in this country that recognize individual freedom. mostly, there are alternatives. for something like swine flu, quarantine would not be very effective. can be transmitted before people get sick. it is too hard to know who has been infected. would be hard to know who should be quarantined. the question about vaccination in schools -- i am not sure that the vaccine was actually given out in schools. that is not the practice now in most parts of the country. you have to show that you have

been vaccinatioed in order to register for school to the decision has to do with policy. i am not a policymaker. i believe that has to do with policies about the relationship between the disease control authorities and the education authorities. it would be a question better put to the education people themselves. host: a message via twitter. guest: that is the $64,000 question these days. everybody should have access to health care. can it fuel an epidemic? could be considered not to? as i said, an epidemic is a

story. i guess you could tell the story that way. i try not to say that this is an epidemic and that is not. if obesity and crystal meth addiction can be epidemics, maybe a lack of health care could be called an epidemic. is a little the semantic. does lack of health care fuel epidemics? i think it is fair to say that in historical experience, when people are unhealthy, they are more susceptible to disease. it is certainly true that the spread of disease is often faster among the poor because of crowding and the inability to afford preventive measures. in that sense, it is related. host: chuck is on the line in

chattanooga, tenn. on the democrats' line. caller: i want to ask a question about what you believe is the most expensive and the most overblown epidemic of the 21st century. you talked about obesity and other kinds of the epidemics. what has caused america more than anything else so far this century? guest: it sounds like she has an answer in mind. i do not have a good answer to the question. i cannot tell you exactly in dollar amounts where we have put the most money. certainly, lots of fundy was

tracked into aids -- lots of funding was put into aids. we spent a lot of money on diseases that do not often register as epidemics. i think we probably should. as you know, heart disease is the leading cause of death in america. we spend money on that. most people probably believe we should. i would not want to say we are wasting money on a and b, and not spending enough on c and d. i am more interested in the way we talk about epidemics. the question of expense is not one that i have dealt with. the question of what we talk about most, i think, until swine flu came a few months ago, we probably would have said bird flu, obesity, drugs, alcohol, and cigarette smoking. it could take your pick

depending on how you listen to the public dialogue. should we? that is the problem. that is a policy problem. how do we decide what is the most important thing? how do we decide what is the real threat? host: the role of the media in all of this. good job? bad job? what do you think? guest: i am often asked this question. i will tell you. there is the paradox of getting past about the role of the media as i am talking to the media. without pulling punches, i think the media, in general, do what the media are supposed to do. that is, delivers information in a way that tells a story. sometimes the media highlights stories that are inflammatory. we talk about shark attacks probably much more than we need

to since not the medieval diane shark attacks -- seen as how not that many people die in shark attacks. people like them. society tells stories to ourselves. it does not seem to me that by and large media creates a mysteriouhysteria. host: joann on the republican line. caller: good morning. i was watching the science channel years ago. they have a program on about how they collected all these health records that went back generations.

they were discussing obesity of the time in the families. they traced it back to a famine that have occurred generations before. are you familiar with this study? guest: it rings a bell, but i could not cite you chapter and verse. caller: i was 1wondering. we have all these fake sugars today. and they have this outbreak of diabetes. i was just wondering if any of this could be tied into our genes and illevolution. guest: she brings up the question of obesity and genetics and evolution.

other than swine flu, obesity seems to be on our public health mind the most. i talk about this in the book. there is a lot of inquiry about obesity and a lot of rhetoric about obesity. it seems that everybody has a different take about what is causing this problem. it is worth pointing out that it seems to me that the problem of obesity, based on current data, is overblown. the mortality associated with obesity is normally that rate. the safe levels of weight are often missestimated. from the data, it is the extremely obese who have been

increased risk of mortality. if you just go by the day the, it is not clear that this is such a big public health problem. and yet it is a big public health problem because we talk about it in that way. a lot of money and programs and research goes into obesity. as to the genetic hypothesis, there seems to be genetic components to obesity. they're sometimes seems to be dietary components. it is very hard to say this is the cause of obesity. it is very hard to say that obesity is a problem. it seems to be a problem for some people. some people who are obese develop diabetes or heart disease. many do not. many experienced a long and relatively healthy life.

it is hard to say. you cannot say that if you become obese, you will die from it. it is a complex problem. there are lots of pieces to this. it all has to do with the way we live our lives today. the public health conversation about obesity and besides conversation -- and the science conversation, it is over layered with all sorts of questions about what is wrong with the way we live today? host: another passage from the book. host: here's another look at the book.

our guest is philip alcabes, author of "dread" in new york. sheila on the democrats' line. caller: every day we hear about so many people losing their jobs. a lot of people cannot afford cobra and they lose health insurance. now we have the swine flu fall season coming up. what would happen if many, many people came down with the swine flu and they could not afford to get health care? guest: it sounds like there are two parts to her question. there is one part about health care, which is on everybody's mind these days. the other part is positively about swine flu. let me answer the swine flu part. i do not have a crystal ball. i do not know if swine flu is

coming back. nobody knows that. some people think it will. others think there's good reason to believe that it will not. there's a very persuasive paper by some people who are very good scientists and historians of influenza. it appeared in the journal of the ama this week. it is about the history of the h1n1 flu. it says it is likely there will not be what some people have called a second wave of small inflow. -- second wave of swine flu. we do not know if it will come back. preparations are being made in case there is more swine flu this fall. what would happen to people who do not have health insurance? that seems to be a central policy question. that is part of why the health

care debate seem so pressing right now. for many years, we have had a health care system that is content to leave tens of millions of americans without health insurance. what happens to people like that if there is some really bad 7 health problem. maybe it will be flu. maybe it will be something else in the future. i do not have a good answer. i think it is a policy answer that remains to be developed. host: another question from twitter. guest: as the immune status of adults in the u.s. declined? i do not know if that is true. it is very common for people to think that modern times has done

something bad to us. on the face, it would seem that we are doing better than ever. not everybody. americans live longer now than they ever have before. the percentages of people who die in disease outbreaks is smaller than before. as i mentioned earlier, people -- the leading cause of death in america is hard disease. -- heart disease. is hard to say that we're doing something right because it is easy to see what we're doing wrong in our society, but we are doing better than our grandparents did. empirically, it does not seem like we have made ourselves more susceptible to disease. host: orlando, fla. on the

independent line. you are on with philip alcabes. caller: good morning. you made a comment a few minutes ago that prompts me to ask you two questions. why is it so difficult? they are talking about not having enough vaccines. i have heard because it is not enough profit and the pharmaceutical companies do not want to make it. why is it so difficult to make the vaccines? you said that you did not know if there was going to be another wave of h1n1. it has not gone away. in orlando, just last week, we had another person died from the flu. it is just continuing. host: two questions.

why don't you take the first one first. vaccines and profit and making an offer everyone who needs it. guest: you want to the vaccine production to go slowly. we have a very good example of what happens when flu vaccine production went too fast. that was in 1976 in what is sometimes called the swine flu fiasco. there had been a small outbreak in new jersey. a few recruits died. i think the number was 13. there were about 300 cases altogether. because of alarm that this was the beginning of a reprises of the terrible 1918 flu, u.s. authorities launched a nationwide vaccination program. vaccine production was hurried so the vaccine would be ready in the fall.

i think about 40 million doses were administered. then it turned out that people were getting a syndrome, a bad neurological syndrome. some people died from it. that was a lesson about hurrying vaccine production. i hope we have learned it. there are questions on whether there will be vaccines available soon enough. with a vaccine production, you what to make sure it is safe before you offer it to anybody. let me say that vaccine production is done by forms of new companies. it is not by thdone by the govet in this country. it is a profit making enterprise. in some cases, it is a cutthroat one. some people have said blood thirsty. the pharmaceutical companies

want to be able to make their profit when they are producing a vaccine or other products. that is what for-profit companies do. the caller also mentioned h1n1 has not gone away. that is true. when people talk about a second wave, they're talking about the possibility that there will be a lot of new cases in the fall. that remains a possibility. host: 1 other viewer via tw itter. what can we look forward in terms of organization, money, that kind of thing? guest: because i do not have a crystal ball, i will not attempt to read the future. i will tell you what i copal happens and hope that will be a sufficient response to the streetweet.

-- i will tell you what i hope happens. i hope that we do it in a smarter way. to use an old-fashioned term, more holistic, more and related to the complex relationships between the environment, environmental change, commerce, transportation, human migration, the food supply, and human susceptibilities. i think we're trying to do that now. i am impressed with the movement that is called one world one health. it wants to redirect our attention in a more complex and holistic way. if you really want to control

viruses, and others that come from animals, we have to stop thinking about locking the doors to the human population, which is what we attempt to do with the flu vaccine. and really think in a much more complex way about the entire ecosystem that we live in. hope that is the future. host: this is in open called the baltimore sun -- this is in "the baltimore sun" this morning.

host: do you ever see something like that happening? guest: alas, i am sure the research will go on. this is the elusive but beguiling silver bullet. everybody wants the one shot that will fix everything. i am old enough to remember the space program of the 1960's and the food that the astronauts had to eat. you want to put everything into one box and injected into people and they will be magically immune.

that would be great. that would be a terrific efficiency. i. -- that would be a terrific efficiency i suppose. that gets into germ theory. it goes away from my vision of what really sound public health in the future has to look like, which is we stop thinking about viruses as a problem of humans and start realizing that the march froy emerge from complex interactions that we share with animals and all of the determinants of the way that animals live in the way we interact with them. host: here is what viewers question via e-mail. is cancer an epidemic?

if not, why not? guest: i will stay away from stating if this is an epidemic and that is not treated cancer kills a lot of people in america. i think there are 600,000 cancer deaths every year. that is much bigger of the problem than one century ago. that is partly because we live longer because we are good at controlling the killers of a century ago like tuberculosis or pneumonia. do we want to call an epidemic? that is in the eyes of the beholder. host: william is on the line for republicans. good morning. caller: good morning. first-time caller. thank you for the opportunity, c-span. first, by to talk about my experiences and then i will ask

a question. i dread vaccines. the reason is that in the first grade and the second grade, i was given a vaccine. by the time i got to the third grade, 10% of our class suffers from the disease. it was a scary experience. what is an acceptable rate of instance of a disease caused by the vaccine itself? guest: william debts at a terrible problem. it is one of the reasons why vaccines cannot be the whole public health answer. in the 1950's, early in the polio vaccine era, in the first

vaccine, it was contaminated with what is called wild type of virus. kids who got the vaccine came down with polio because of the vaccine. many of them would not have had polio had they not been vaccinated. it is a terrible thing. it qualifies as tragedy. vaccines are by and large safer now. it is a reminder. but along with the experience in 1976 -- it is a reminder about the problem with vaccination. there is likely to be some adverse consequences of vaccination. it may be an answer, but it can also harm some people. william house to what is the acceptable level of harm. -- william ask what is the acceptable level of harm. i would not be able to say that.

of course you want to minimize harm. the decision about a vaccination strategy means you have to decide whether you are really to take the chance that some people will be harmed by the vaccine. host: tell us more about why you wrote about autism. here's what you wrote. guest: yes, autism is not nothing itself, of course true that is a real way of behaving in the world. a lot of people have the way of behaving in the world. if we say that we are ready to accommodate people who have autistic styles, than in what sense is this an abnormality? the rhetoric about the autism

epidemic seems to be about a certain set of fears about modern life. in particular, there have been concerns about vaccination and concerns that vaccinations causes autism. and also about environmental influences. perhaps changes in diet and so forth. in a way, talking about autism as if it was an epidemic is a way of talking about the things about our modern life that makes us uneasy. as we learn increasingly that we can deal with kids to have autistic styles, if we think about good ways to do it. host: one last call on the democrats' line.