more in the did you know term whenin the 1987 she served for justice thurgood marshall, she was a regular reliable guard in pickup basketball games played on the of ourr -- top floor marble palace, the highest court in the land. she showed how sharp -- how far she would go to foster collegiality. under the tutelage is of justice scalia, she became a fearless hunter. the personal trainer with whom she boxes has been my physical 1999ss already and since -- fitness guardian since 1999. folk cross best job combination on the federal bench.

elena accomplished in a made -- an amazing feat at harvard law school. didn't -- students once discontent began to like the place. how did she manage the transformation? not so much by fundraising and constructing new buildings, although she was champion at both. in her own words, i looked around for little things i could do, things that don't cost much money, don't take too much time that you don't have to have a faculty meeting to do. among things that fit that bill, she discovered you can buy more students happiness per dollar by giving people free coffee than anything else.

justice, she heads the cafeteria committee, a truly disheartening assignment. not much one can do to make it better, but she found something she could fix even on a slim budget. a frozen yogurt machine dispenses sustenance all can enjoy. i leave off with a characteristic example of her quick wit. at the hearing on her confirmation, senator lindsey graham asked whether she thought miranda warnings should be given to terrorists. the infamous christmas day underwear bomber, for example. her, where asked were you on christmas day?

it would be inappropriate to a dress an open question that might one day come before the board. the senator persisted. i just asked where you were on christmas. response, senator, like all jews, i was probably in a chinese restaurant. [laughter] [applause] with enormous pleasure, i invite you to join me in welcoming justice elena kagan to the podium. [applause] >> thank you, thank you. sit down.

ginsburg deserves a standing o, i have not been anything yet. you, justice ginsburg for that wonderful introduction. i think christmas day story is going to follow me every place i go. there is nothing i will never write for the u.s. supreme court that is going to be so much quoted as that line. i'm still going to try. you so much to the new york state bar association for having me. it is an honor to be here to talk with all of you. especially because you have given me this wonderful opportunity to talk about one of the living giants of american law, ruth bader ginsburg. i am very grateful for that. the court,years on

serving with justice ginsburg, i have come to admire her more and more each day. as a judge, a colleague, and a friend. they say life on the court can be a little cloistered and i did not realize until recently that , -- twos on the outside folks on the outside, justice ginsburg is more than that. too many of them, she is a hip-hop icon. notorious rbg. [applause] they sell these truly. she is the subject of an opera, a comic book, a tumblr, and the blog. -blog. the ruth bader gins

i'm going to disappear for my second prop. she is a bobblehead. bobblehead because the head bobbles. here she is, i know you won't be able to see this. she is standing on the ground of arginia military institute, coed.e she made this is a safe. what she is doing is she is pulling from the safe the $.13 less per dollar that lilly ledbetter was paid relative to her lowest paid male colleague. that is justice ginsburg the bobblehead. there is also some reference to copyright law in here, but i will spare you that.

did you know that buzz feed has 19 reasons ruth bader ginsburg is your favorite supreme court justice? [laughter] funny,y were all pretty but 19 was a little bit much. i thought i would give you a sample. here are two of them. first -- [laughter] [applause] [inaudible] [applause]

there are 17 more reasons why justice ginsburg is your favorite justice. you can make them up. after this is over, go talk with your friends and come up with your favorites. senselly makes absolute that justice ginsburg has become an idol for younger generations and especially for younger women , of whom i am just delighted to see many here. her impact on america and american law has been extraordinary. one way to see that impact clearly is by looking at the women who have served on the court. about 25 years separate the first two, sandra day o'connor and justice ginsburg from the next two, me and justice sotomayor or. in those 25 years, the world changed for women.

's in justice sotomayor post law school past were easier . when justice ginsburg started out at harvard law school in 1956, she was part of only the seventh class to admit women and not 500 person class had eight people. did you say nine? i do not know. one of us is right. [laughter] >> could we settle on a .5? alle on-campus dorms were four men -- the on-campus dorms were all ferment and half of the classroom buildings, so were the restrooms. you had to make a mad dash across campus when the need struck.

the dean that the time had a tradition formous the few women students who were there. every year, he would invite all of the women in the first-year class for a lovely dinner at his house. , of all sit at one table course. when dinner finished, the dean would assure everyone into the living room, where you would ask them one by one to explain what they were doing at the law school occupying a seat that could've been held by a man. predecessor,o my who has gotten a lot of grief for this practice, i recently heard justice ginsburg give the story a charitable interpretation. apparently, years later, the dean told her he did not -- he had not meant the question to be skeptical or on time -- or

unkind. stories too have tell the doubting thomas is on the faculty. i do not know. [applause] [laughter] as a former dean myself, i admired the man's capacity to spin, but i am not sure i believe it. justice ginsburg was already a rock star. she shot to the top of her class . she was selected as an editor of the harvard law review. even being the notorious rbg was not quite good enough. the start of for 30 year, she made a request -- a for third year, she made a request of the dean. her husband had just graduated from law school and started a job in new york when he was diagnosed with a serious illness. she asked the dean if she could

complete her last year of law school at columbia while still receiving a harvard degree. he refused saying if she was going to spend her final year at columbia, all she could get was a columbia degree, not one from harvard. somehow she survived that deprivation. [laughter] ,he graduated from columbia getting the highest possible honors from that school as well. i am just going to digress a bit. harvard lawsequent school deans, including me, hisred to right wrong and to give justice ginsburg the harvard degree that she should have gotten earlier. she always refused. i heard her say a couple of years ago that her husband told her she should hold out for the real prize, an honorary degree

from harvard university. he was a very smart man and justice ginsburg received that honorary degree a couple of years ago. back to my real story, although justice ginsburg excelled at two great law schools, she had a tough time finding a job. law firms refuse to hire her. one told her they already had a token woman. when she applied for clerkship, the great judges of the error declined even to consider her. he did not want any women in his chambers because he would be inhibited in their presence. he would not break the supreme court tradition of hiring only mail clerks. -- male clerks. she did get a hardship on the

southern district of new york because the great professor threatened a judge and made him hire her. after that, she was hired by rutgers law school and became one of the first female law professors in the country. even that came with a string attached. rutgers told her she was going to be paid less than her male colleagues because your husband has a very good job. against the striking background of gender bias, justice ginsburg succeeded marvelously. she eventually became the first woman tenured professor at columbia law school. she founded the aclu women's rights project. she was appointed by president carter to the d.c. court of appeals. i president clinton to the supreme court. she did all of this by -- while raising two children. the first was born just before

she started law school. jane followed her parents into the lobby coming to columbia law professor and one of the copyrightforemost scholars. the second shared his mother's love for opera and is now the founder and president of the grammy award-winning record label for classical music. i know justice ginsburg would attribute her ability to have it all to her husband. as everyone who knew him could tell you, he was a brilliant man, hilarious and witty. a world-class tax lawyer and chef and an all-around mensch. when i was dean at harvard, at a panel i was moderating once on worklife balance, a professor, one of my colleagues was asked by a student, how she'd had managed to combine such a great career with such a great family life.

she gave a four word answer. mary the right guy. i think justice ginsburg would agree and she certainly found the perfect partner. wouldt think even marty make the path easy for justice ginsburg in the legal world of the 1950's and 1960's. every step of her way was marked it, andeverance, gre downright courage. 20 five years later, my experience was very different. when i graduated from law school in 1986, almost 40% of my classmates were women. female law firm partners and professors were not exactly the norm, but their numbers were growing and they weren't thought of as tokens or curiosities. almost all federal judges and justices were more than happy to hire the brightest women as their clerks.

although i won't say i never felt any bias, it was pretty easy for me to take the path of my choosing. a couple of times, i happen to be the first woman as dean of harvard and solicitor general. they were meaningful and important. hadit was a fluke that they not happened already. the dominoes were more than ready to fall. betweenlains this golf justice ginsburg experience and mine? in large part, the answer is simply justice ginsburg. as a litigator and as a judge, she change the face of american antidiscrimination law. more than any other person, she can take credit for making the law of this country work for women. in doing so, she made possible my own career and later on the

careers of many of today's devotees of the notorious rgb. i want to explore her contribution by looking at six of her greatest hits. three of the cases she litigated as a private attorney and three antidiscrimination opinions she has written as a justice. i think they show the remarkable progress the country and the law have made thanks to justice in sprigs efforts, it -- justice ginsburg's efforts. i demonstrate another thing i want to talk about, which is her excellence as both a law hereunder judge. lawyer and they judge. as a law professor, she was a path marking scholar of civil

procedure and one of the first compared to this -- comparativists. path marking, have you ever heard that word before? it appears in over 30 of her opinions. it also appears not to have existed. oh well. among her less well-known she wrote the definitive american volume on civil procedure in sweden. when the supreme court base is a tricky question of swedish civil procedure, we always go straight to justice ginsburg. [laughter] as a judge, she has authored onstanding opinions federalism, statutory interpretation, separation of powers, and civil procedure.

for the students in this room, if any of you want a refresher course on personal jurisdiction, i recommend you read justice ginsburg trio of opinions. today i want to focus on her contribution to women's rights because however important personal jurisdiction is, that is the work that has most change the world. senseimportant to have a of what the constitutional law of gender equality was like before justice ginsburg founded the aclu women's rights project. that is easy enough. it did not exist. as justice ginsburg has put it, the constitution was an empty .upboard the one exception was the 19th

amendment, which had given women the right to vote in 1920. the law was still riddled with gender distinctions, open discrimination. the supreme court had yet to declare a single one of those laws of violation of the equal protection clause. everyone is familiar with the when litigating race discrimination claims in the 1940's and 1950's. there were difficulties they faced absolutely unique to that effort. even those lawyers could point to a handful of legal precedent paying lip service to racial equality. for the nascent women rights movement, it was all but nothing. ont justice ginsburg drew was the rapid change that was occurring in social attitudes about women and their role in american life.

mind,t ongoing change in she approached the cause of women's equality with a remarkably strategic mind. justice ginsburg's first brief before the supreme court was in 1971. she has said this case was .erfect and the law, perfect her client was sally reed who lived in idaho with her son separately from the sun's father. her son committed suicide and she filed to come -- petition to administer his estate, which consisted of just a few items of personal property. the father filed a competing petition to administer the estate. -- and i'mded quoting -- males must be preferred to females. that was that. the father's petition was granted over the mothers.

just as ginsburg saw the cases potential. the idaho law was a relic dating back to the days when women's -- women could not hold property. the discrimination was unmistakable. the the case made it to supreme court, justice ginsburg took on the brief. wrote- the brief she strikes the reader as stunningly ambitious. it made the case for subjecting all classifications based on sex to the highest level of judicial review. at a time when not a single such classification had been invalidated by the supreme court. the brief aims to be more than a legal document. it tries to educate the court about social changes regarding the treatment and status of women. educate andwas to

to spark judges and lawmakers understanding that their own daughters and granddaughters could be disadvantaged by the way things were. in line with that goal, the brief began with a simple proposition. in very recent years, a new appreciation of women's lace has been generated in the united states. it marshaled on array of social science research to show that women were just as qualified as men to administer estates. some of the evidence justice ginsburg that before the court had to do with women's aptitude for managing homes, sly attempts to appeal to the more conservative members of the court. the brief was littered with citations to literature, history, biography, and more, all tending to show the appalling treatment of women

over the years and the intrinsic injustice of sex-based discrimination. the brief cited favorable decisions of the west german federal constitution reports, not sweden. decisions before it became verboten to consider such things. if our supreme court noticed what the west german constitutional court was doing, the justices might ponder how far behind can we be? the court ruled unanimously in sally reed's favor. it itshort paragraphs, struck down the law as an irrational gender-based. argued ginsburg's brief the court held the idaho law was the very kind of arbitrator of .egislative choice

however much ideal -- idaho choicean easy way, the may not lawfully be mandated solely on the basis of sex. the court did not go so far as to subject gender classifications to heightened scrutiny. but the broad language planted the seeds. water is a long way away. i feel like you have to do a marco rubio. [laughter] ginsburg's first world -- oral argument came a year later. case was ain that lieutenant in the air force. her husband was a full-time student at a small college in

alabama. under federal law, a married male servicemember always qualified for a housing allowance, but a female do servicemember only qualified only if she covered three fourths of the income. the theory appeared to be that most women in the military were supported by their husbands and not the other way around. the women did not usually needed government subsidy. she fell just shy and she did not get a housing alliance -- allowance. justice ginsburg moved the ball forward. this was not a challenge to an antiquated outlier statute, but to a federal law in everyday use. it was also a case that cut to the heart of stereotypes. the facts involved and inversion of traditional gender roles.

the court was forced to decide whether a law that relied on increasingly out dated notions about gender could be defended on that basis. was compelling. she identified mistakes in stark terms. this was a law that helps keep a woman in her place, a place inferior to those occupied by men in our society. she made a forceful push for subjecting interbase classifications. she skewered arguments that women did not need protection because of their numerical superiority. racee would suggest that is not a suspect criterion in the district of columbia because the black population here outnumbers the white. those of us who occasionally have to lean in to hear justice

ginsburg's questions from the bench, this oral argument is a reminder that she has forcefulness to spare and she wants it. the argument went well enough, but afterwards, the former dean, who was then solicitor general, came over to congratulate her. say, you are ok. [laughter] now i am claiming you. 8-1.ourt ruled justice ginsburg one most of her cases. the lead opinion of four justices reads like a ginsburg brief. it bemoaned the paternalistic attitude that it once been firmly rooted in our national consciousness through citations to literature, history, and sociologist. they recounted the mistreatment of women.

it showed how misguided any defense of this discriminatory law was. justices --- four justice ginsburg finally achieved something close to that result three years later. the law was a historical artifact of curiosity. oklahoma defined the age of majority for certain alcohol purchases of 21 for men and 18 for women. he was a man under 21 and he wanted beer and he sued to get it. [laughter] ginsburg filed a brief

on craig's behalf. it has long been remarked that part of the genius of ginsburg as litigator was her careful client selection. greg was one of several men she represented. genderlped show that lines were harmful, not just to women, but also to men and children. this tactic occasionally picked up an extra vote from an otherwise hesitant judge and it also served a deeper function, laws that afforded women special treatment were also -- were often seen as favors to them. justice stewart once remarked that he thought it might be better for women if the equal rights amendment were never ratified. that way women's rights groups would be free to challenge only those laws that gave them worse treatment while keeping the ones that in a fitted them --

benefited them. ginsburg confronted this notion head-on and demolished it. on the surface, the law may appear to afford young women a liberty withheld from young man. , thedeeper inspection gender line drawn by oklahoma is revealed as a manifestation of traditional attitudes about the expected behavior of males and females, part of the myriad signals and messages that really underscore the notion of man as societies active members and of women as men's quiescent companions. she punctuated this with the citation. how many of the justices do you think had read that? [laughter] brief is also notable for a more subtle legal reason.

although justice ginsburg's previous breeds that are good. badly for treating gender like -- recognizing the court had been willing to meet her halfway and justice ginsburg argued for a moderately heightened scrutiny, writing they should be invalidated if they were based on overbroad generalizations. that argument did the trick. the majority struck down the law , adopting a standard for gender-based classifications known as intermediate scrutiny. justifying such laws on the basis of archaic and overbroad generalizations or traditional notions of women's roles would no longer be possible. after her triumph in those cases, justice ginsburg was appointed to the d c circuit by president carter.

i carry a minor grudge about justice ginsburg tenure there. when i was a law student, i had the good fortune to be offered a clerkship by several of justice ginsburg's colleagues. harry edwards. the only one of president carter's nominee to the d c circuit who thought me not quite ginsburg.h was judge frank, if she did not even interview me. t loss,e overcame that, too. she was nominated to the supreme court by president clinton and confirmed by the senate 96-3. the kind of vote these days you

would assume is a misprint. [laughter] in her years on the court, she has issued countless great opinions, but i want to focus on ,hree, two of them dissents that are brought into sharper focus her contributions to women's equality. justice ginsburg wrote the in 1996. the case arose out of an effort to admit women to the virginia military institute, a military college. for over 150 years, the school had been restrict the two-man. men.stricted to virginia agree to open a satellite school for women. this institute for leadership was nothing like the real deal. it employed less qualified

faculty, offered fewer degrees, and did not give students in the opportunity to participate in a military training program that made via my great. -- vmi great. in 1950, the university of texas law school argued that it could exclude african-americans from its flagship campus and place them in a non-accredited law school just for blacks. the court deemed that arrangement a violation of equal protection understanding the new school had none of those incapable ofch are objective measurement, but which make for greatness in a law school. in 1996, virgin you was arguing it could do the same -- virginia was arguing it to do the same thing to women. theice ginsburg wrote opinion deeming this arrangement unconstitutional. -- opinion professed

classifications based on sex could be upheld only if they had a persuasive justification. justified byctions broad generalizations about efforts tobenign help women could not stand. applying these principles, she rejected virginia's rationalizations that its system of single-sex schools was intended to provide a diversity of educational opportunities or to maintain the rigorous physical regiment. a wealth of the store: sociological knowledge, she compared those explanations associationsat bar once gave to exclude women from the practice of law or policeman bashed or police departments

once offered to exclude women from their ranks. she refused to accept any explanation based on what women would prefer. most men would also prefer not to be subjected to the physical rigors of vmi. a point on which even our dissenting colleagues might agree. the opinion is an exemplary piece of judicial craft. with her characteristic attention to detail, she explored the many facets of vmi and the sister school in order to illustrate the profound differences between them. she synthesized a generation's worth of precedent and in a matter of a great common-law judge, recast all of those prior cases into the role that there

must be a persuasive justification for any gender-based distinctions. justice ginsburg faced a vigorous dissent by justice scalia. an experience that can be like facing down the locomotive. justice ginsburg says the dissent written in justice scalia's powerful style ruined her weekend. [laughter] but she also said it made your opinion better. one is struck by how elegantly and effectively she response to the many objections justice scalia raises, maintaining the flow and structure of her opinion without ever getting bogged down in squabbling. it has been 18 years since the vmi case and some kinds of

victories are harder to come by. the law of gender equality has not changed much in the interim. they are still the constitutional touchdowns. title vii of the civil rights act still bars employers from discriminating on the basis of gender. the court has somehow found reason to cut back on certain antidiscrimination protections. with two ofnclude her dissents. they show how she has remained steady right on the law and reality of gender discrimination even when the courts turned in the opposite direction. it illustrates her ability to speak to people beyond the court in order to rectify the errors. her dissent has become iconic.

the facts of that case are well known even to nonlawyers. she sued. andjury found in her favor a judge ordered goodyear to make up the difference in wages. the court of appeals throughout the judgment of the supreme court affirmed. the legal issue may seem dry at first glance. title vii allows individuals to sue for axa discrimination only when they are less than six months old. in the view of five justices, she was complaining about acts of discrimination that will -- that were many years old.

true, the court admitted her paycheck was lower than those of her male colleagues. the court ruled that those skimpy paychecks were effects of past discrimination and she could not use them to satisfy the statute of limitations. her dissent is remarkable for many things. first and foremost, it it is literally correct. paid discrimination occurs repeatedly over time. the court long ago held that they can challenge a pattern of discrimination each time a new act occurs. she was in her rights to challenge good year. justice ginsburg had often found herself in a position of arguing that judges should change the

law to protect women from unequal treatment. in this case, she did not need to urge that kind of change. the supreme court had already created a world of legal rules much like the ones justice ginsburg had originally envisioned. she was acting for faithful application. it was the majority that was changing the rules by retreating from the decisions the court and congress already made. majoritiesng the errors, her dissent cuts through the clutter. diction, every page result in understanding of realities in gender discrimination in the workplace. occurs in small

increments. small initial discrepancies, she stated, may not be seen as meat for a federal case, when the employee trying to succeed in a nontraditional environment is averse to making waves. , and employeesed initial readiness to give her employers the benefit of the doubt should not preclude her from later challenging the continuing payment of a wage depressed on account of her sex. i suspect when justice ginsburg wrote those words, she remembered her own discrimination and her own experience of pay discrimination as a young professor at rutgers and her battle on behalf of of plaintiffs. endsce ginsburg's dissent with a clarion call for legislative action.

she told me several years ago at harvard law school that this dissent was directed squarely at congress. it was saying, you could not have meant what this court said you meant so fix it. that is what congress did. justice ginsburg opinion was possibly the most effective dissent of this generation. it instantly turned her into a national figure and thrust equal pay into the forefront of public debate. less than two years later, congress enacted and president obama signed the lilly ledbetter fair pay act. that law adopted the theory put forward in justice ginsburg's dissent. the statute of limitations for challenging pay discrimination restarts with each new discriminatory paycheck, as it always should have.

i want to conclude with another dissent. it is more recent met from only last term. it is a dissent i joined. the issue is not terribly hard to grasp. under antidiscrimination law, an employer is responsible for workplace harassment perpetrated by a supervisor. it was not completely settled who qualified as a supervisor. it could be anyone who exercised substantial control over employees. the other option was it was only someone who could formally fire, demote, or transfer an employee. the plaintiff was an african-american woman who worked as a catering assistant and alleged a catering specialist who oversaw her work, but did not have formal power to fire her, had harassed her on

the basis of her race. the court dismissed the suit. it was possible the person who was harassing her was not her supervisor under any definition. the real problem was the court's reasoning. the majority said only with similar power could qualify as supervisors. it is thought that was the simplest role and so, the best one. justice ginsburg filed a dissent , joined by three other justices. in my humble opinion, it it had the majority dead to rights. supervisors who can threaten employees with inferior work assignments are for elite -- are fully capable of harassing and abusing them as supervisors with formal power to demote or transfer. this conclusion followed readily from our prior cases.

-- knowledge of the realities of workplace discrimination showed how blinkered the contrary rule was. i thought how professors can harass their secretaries, even though they have no formal power to fire them. justice ginsburg illustrated through a series of cases just how often that kind of harassment can occur. and so how much workplace discrimination the majorities rule would allow. but in this decent too what is perhaps most notable is its closing. as in ledbetters justice ginsburg called on congress to intervene to correct the wayward interpretation of title seven,

in which a court adopted interpretations of it that congress later had to reject and correct. the passage seems a bit wearied as if to say haven't we been through all this before? but it also has the sound of a boxer jumping back into the ring for another round. others who fought so long and hard might have grown frustrated for disappointments a fight equality entails. but as anyone who knows her can tell you, as the trainer whom we share as justice ginsburg told you often tells me justice indefatigible. justice ginsburg would have been a giant of the law even if he would have never been a justice.

the same is true of her although she has brilliantly extended those contributions as a judge. more than any other individual ruth bader ginsburg is responsible for eliminating sex discrimination from american law. how has she done it? one of the constants of justice ginsburg style extending from the brief in 1971 to the advance decent in 2013 has been a keen attention to the realities of gender discrimination. partly no doubt this comes from personal experience, the doors that shut on her when she graduated, the paid discrimination as rutgers. it also must come from her many years from listening to and fighting for other women who suffered from even greater discrimination. as a it will gator she used this owledge to rebut every dated

rationalization to refute gender discrimination. and she relied on it to give the court a full understanding of the justices she was seeking to correct. as a justice too, she cons at that particular timely returns to the realities of discrimination to show how to correctly apply anti-discrimination principles. another equally important feature of justice ginsburg's approach has been her sensitivity to the role of courts in our democracy. now, that may seem paradoxical for a person who led a law reform movement. but it was and is a crucial part of her thinking. at her harvard conversation, she told me and i'm quoting her words, the courts are reactive institutions. they are not out in the vanguard of any social movement. ile they can put their imprimteter on the side of change they cannot lead it. her work as a justice has

reflected her understanding of this delegate balance. as lawyer, she urged and sometimes shamed the court to catch up with the events occurring outside its doors. but she also recognized that change could not come all at once. she chose her clients, her cases and her targets with exquisite care to avoid pushing the court too far, too fast. and much the same way as a justice, she has often been a tempermental conservative who prefers the gradual common law approach to the sweeping rule or understand necessary holding. she has been critical of certain wade ost notably roe v. for having voted to expansively and too quickly. but she also recognizes that when the time is right, courts can play an important role in

ratifying society's progress and a well placed decent can become an important spur to justice. and there's a third piece of the ginsburg style, one that has become especially impressive to me since i joined the court and that is simple mastery of legal craft. that appears in the appellant brief she wrote as a lawyer which are models of precision and power. and so too her opinions reflect this great apparently inborn gift. each opinion is crist lean, exact and elegant. every word is carefully chosen and perfectly apt. every sentence well considered. every argument organized coherent and to the point. you're never afraid that a stray word or thought may cause some unforeseen bad consequence down

the road. of all the justices, justice ginsburg drafts her opinions the most quickly. yet, when i read them i'm always struck how error-free and polished they are. we have a practice of inviting others to comment on our opinions and ask for changes. i almost never have anything to say about justice ginsburg. they are ready to be published the moment they are circulated. she's a judge's judge. and every time i read one of her opinions, i feel as though i learn how to do my job a little better. justice ginsburg has also taught me something more personal being a member of an institution like the supreme court isn't always easy. we disagree about a lot of things of great import, matters on which we all feel deeply. it's a commercial part of the job not to take those disagreements personally.

partly that's because there's always another case and if we're to remain open to persuasion and also able to persuade others. we need to stay on good terms. but partly it's because the court is an important institution, an institution that the country needs to work and it's just not going to function well if its members aren't able to cooperate. no one performs that difficulty better than justice ginsburg. she knows about what the law requires and what the law demands. but she's also a model of respect and collegiality with every member of the court. she mansion to be universally admired and beloved by me, by justice scalia, by everyone in between. [laughter] without sacrificing and iota of her principles or convictions.

she told me once that her secret comes in part from something her mother-in-law told her back when she and marty were young. what's the secret to a successful marriage she asked? sometimes her mother-in-law says, it pays to be a little deaf. sometimes it pays to be a little deaf around the court too. [laughter] and justice ginsburg knows just when to do that. i've seen justice ginsburg maintain those values of collegiality even when it's toughest. our tradition at the court and it's usually a lovely, lovely tradition. is to have lunch together after the conferences in which we discuss and vote on cases. the rule at those lunches is no more court talk just friendly conversation about sports and movies and music and things like that.

now without giving any specifics, i can tell you that i once left a difficult conference, maybe the most difficult since i joined the court. and i found it almost impossible to imagine going to lunch with my colleagues. [laughter] we had just had a very serious disagreement about a very tough issue. and i wasn't so inclined to immediately switch that off and chat about the movies. i told justice ginsburg that i didn't think i would go. she was understanding but quite firm. you have to go she said. you have to act as though nothing has just happened. her temperament, her maturity and judgment, her calmness and wisdom helped make the courts the institution it is. and of course, when the nore tores you r.b.g. tells you to go to lunch, you go.

-- nor tores you r.b.g. tells you to go to lunch, you go. and so i went. one last story. one this one coming from one of my clerks. a few months ago the court held a seminar of sorts for women in he law for the women law law clerks. they dealt with gender discrimination, issues that are still present but unimageably different than in justice insburg law of age when it was fanciful. justice ginsburg surprised everyone by walking into the room by asking questions. as soon as she entered, one of my law clerks told me, all of these young women stood up and applauded. it was like seeing a legend walk in the door, my law clerk said. i know that i'm her colleague and not one of her army of 20-something groupies.

[laughter] but every day i feel much the same way when i see justice ginsburg walk down the halls, think i'm seeing an era. she has done a lot in the last 40 years to make america an equal and just society. it's an honor to sit on the same bench with her knowing how much she's contributed to my life and much more importantly to the lives of women around the world. thank you, justice ginsburg. [applause]

>> thank you, everyone. that was wonderful. so i -- i think, i hope we have time for just a few questions. and i believe that it will be permissible to pose questions to either of the two justices if that's ok with them. the crowd in the room and the technology lnology in the room is such that if you do have a question, i'm going to ask you to raise your hand, to stand up and to ask your question as loudly and clearly as possible if -- if necessary i will rephrase or rearticulate the question. and again, we have limited time. it's getting late. i think it's still snowing but if anyone has a question, please raise your hand and we'll try to deal with it. right there. thank you.

>> justice ginsburg, i was -- i was wondering if you could explain something about your opinion in virginia partly through the opinion you discussed the differences between men and women and you say that there's something to be celebrated? and i'm wondering if you could talk about why you use a word like "celebrate" especially when there was so little to be celebrating? >> i would ask to repeat the question -- >> the question was in the virginia case, justice ginsburg's language identified reasons to celebrate the differences, am i right, between men and women and the question is why use the word "celebrate" when there was so many things in the fact pattern at issue not be

celebrated. it's a tough one. justice ginsburg? >> well, don't you agree that it is something to celebrate that we have a world made up of both men and women? i celebrate that i have a daughter and a son. my life as my colleague mentioned was enormously enriched by picking the right life partner. so what i meant to say is that we are not alike. we don't look alike men and women. we look different. well, the world couldn't go on if there weren't both of us. [laughter] [applause] >> in the back? >> can you hear me? i can be really loud. [laughter] >> i'm a second year law student

atfordham. and i want to know if either of you have any advice? >> i don't think that needs to be repeated. >> i have enjoyed everything i have done in the law. but what has made me so satisfied with my career is what justice kagan spoke about. that i spend a lot of my time doing something outside myself, doing something that i hope makes life better for people who are not as fortunate. so you will have a skill that you can use to make a living but also to help make things a little better for other people, to repair tears in your

communities. we should ask the once great dean -- he must have been telling students all the time. [laughter] >> well, it turns out that justice ginsburg could have been a great dean too because that's what i would have said. [laughter] >> very funny. >> for justice ginsburg. how do you feel about the educational institutions that still only admit women on the there toy that those institutions are nurturing and otherwise protecting women. n example might be such as barner college is still women only even though columbia accepts women as well? >> in the v.m.i. case, one of the best friends of the fort

brees was filed by the seven sister colleges. there was nothing the state of virginia offered to its women that could compare with v.m.i. so a state can't make an opportunity available only to omen or only to men. my daughter went to an all-girl 12thl from kindergarten to grade. i think that the school she went to was the best school in the city of new york. so v.m.i. was not about single-sex schools. it was about a state providing an opportunity to to one sex only. by the way, there is one person

in this room who knows about it. and that is ranela, my swedish friend. [laughter] o you remember the book? it was called "dalabin" and so that was the closest i could come to the translation of that. >> well, that's good. now i know the origin. and again i agree with everything with justice ginsburg with one exception because i went to the best single-sex school in new york city. it was at that time single-sex. so sorry, jane. >> in the red? [inaudible]

-- way better. [laughter] >> we read your opinions and that's the way that you convey the messages that you've talked about. what can we do as individual attorneys, women attorneys to advance women in the law and in society generally. we've got to be able to do something to even the playing field. >> that's a good question. >> think the question is what can individual women do generally speaking not as supreme court justices but to even the playing field, even still in the community as it still needs to be done? correct? >> well, you find the place the audience that needs a little education, you give it to them.

nd that was -- i am a little worried that the gains that slowed and ade have backslide. ven be a i wonder why today's women aren't as fired up as the women in my generation were about ssuring that women have an equal chance to as pyre, to ollow their dream. >> although the women who have made you into a hip-hop icon. [laughter] no, i think -- yeah, sometimes maybe younger women don't -- don't appreciate how hard -- how hard the struggle has been,

right? and maybe don't always appreciate it as much because of the -- you know, i think it's a great question. i think different people find themselves in different positions and different roles and there's no one right answer for any -- for everybody. so it's great that you're asking the question. >> i'd like to ask you a question. you watch the super bowl -- [laughter] w did -- [applause] >> she did better than peyton manning. [laughter] [applause] freezing out en

on that field. >> it started in the 50's. [laughter] and what you have been trying to do is get the court reflect what the current sentiment of the country. i don't think the current sentiment of the country is journalism. so what do we do about that? >> you seize the opportunity to correct people who have the rong idea. i've done that in an opinion or two. [laughter] >> i think maybe two more questions. blue. >> thank you, justice, this is really, really fantastic. i wonder if either of you would

speak on the supreme court's sort of unwillingness to allow cameras in the courtroom during arguments. >> well, i don't know why elena's view is on that question. here's one aspect that perhaps the public doesn't notice as much. what we do in the main is not seen in the courtroom. before we come on the bench to hear a case, we have read the opinions that the other judges, the other judges who past on the same question. we read the party's briefs. briefs. the precedent in point. .f there's a good article

ecome bomb to the tee with the arlingtons. what you'll see are two people having a conversation with the justices. and may come away that the best debater would win that question. it would be a false impression to think that the oral argument is what is decisive in most cases. it's not like a trial where you see it's all happening there, witnesses testifying. the hard, hard work is done back in our chambers. >> i think it's a really hard issue. she's taken offsides in this position. obviously there are reasons to have cameras, tarns parent si is

an important thing in government institution. and for the most part i think the court would look pretty good. i think it's actually, you know, nine people who come prepared every single day, important cases, less important cases who are thoughtful and smart and really trying to get the questions right, all nine of us. and so i think -- when people come to the court, it's actually kind of -- kind of impressive actually. when i was solis itor general, i would come in the quourt the cases that i argued and whenever someone in -- would co anymore and watch how they worked. i remember thinking if every america would see this. because i think it would be good for "people" to see that. but i do agree request justice ginsburg there are opportunities for people to misunderstand the

nature of what we do. and to take snippets of conversation in an argument taken out of context to think that's what won or lost the case. and that would be a very unfortunate thing. i don't know -- it's a good example of what you see depending a little bit of where you sit when -- i think as i rved on the court, i've come to see more than i once did the reasons why maybe cameras would not be such a good idea. that they would actually -- in addition to what justice ginsburg said that it might actually change the proceedings themselves, i think people naturally ham a little bit when cameras are on them or speak in sound bites a little bit more than they otherwise might. so i think that something -- i think we're going to have to

become more transparent. but i'm not necessarily sure at putting a camera in for every argument is the way to do it right now. >> one more question. [laughter] >> thank you so much for being here. this is exciting. [inaudible] > at home tests for sufficient context -- corporations can spread their business around in a way to effectively inoculate them against -- can you speak a little bit about projected way or ffects one another corporate

accountability? >> i'm not going to try to epeat that question. the ere was a case about ad days of the dirty war where atrocities had been committed by the government and the charge brought by argentineans was that the affiliates in argentina collaborated with the government the ll or injure some of employees. do you think that that was the suit that belonged in the united states? argentina is where it all happened. -- of them were available

is it appropriate? do you think it would be appropriate for the united states to be the operator to be the forum in which that case is heard? [inaudible] >> in light of what it said. but doing business and the agency theory that was completed, that yes, that general jurisdiction could have stood. >> well, then it would be the court for the world because every life corporation could be sued in the united states in that theory. and that would make us look a rather arrogant to our nations, to other nations in the world community who has the kind of attitude towards jurisdiction and i'm -- i first began to think about these questions when

i was studying civil procedure of sweden. [laughter] where the notion was you don't bring a suit where you happen to grab the person who committed the wrong. but it depends on where it happened. where the events insuit occurred. it's a logical place for the constitute be brought. >> we were asked before about giving advice and my last piece of advice is don't mess around with justice ginsburg when it omes to personal jurisdiction. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. and at home, thank you. thank you.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> i think is more important than justice itself. i believe that because only a very small number comparably people are coming to enter into a courtroom, much less have any entanglement with the law. >> friday c-span radio continues it's series with supreme court

justices. associate justice tom clark at 4:00 eastern, online at cspan.org and snation wide on xm radio channel 120. ? on the next "washington journal" dr. deborah peel discusses atient privacy laws. then food security issues and american's access to food. facebook phone calls, comment and tweets. two members of congress talked about healthcare and the healthcare system. tom price of georgia and phil row of tennessee were part of e heritage foundation policy

summit this week. t's just over an hour. >> we are privilege today to be on the forefront of thinking ant about what comes after obama are. f f health care by there is really a lot more in these different plans that are being presented here today and others that are percolating throughout congress and in the conservative think tank role. there's's lot more that join us on this issue than divides us.

we ail agree that we should have choices. we all agree that the market drivers down prices than do federal mandate. health care should be affordable. and freedom should be the center piece of any health care plan. relationships with our doctors should not be coerced both of these plans put us on the path of reform. please join me in welcoming john price to talk about the first one. [applause] >> thank you so much to all. great to be with you and greet be back at heritage. her tan does a -- heritage does a great job. patient center health care which is what the topic is and how do we get it.

what does it mean? what it means to me that as a physician over 25 years taking care of patient,patients and families and doctors making medical decisions, not washington, d.c. we're not insurance companies. --ients, families an doctors and doctors should make decisions whasm we've seen from the administration and washington is that we're moving way from not even on the right trajectory to patient center health care. interestingly i think that conservatives have actually won the debate on the president's health care law and tax. i think we've won that debate. by overwhelming numbers the american people say they don't like the patients health care law and the taxs that go along with it. but they want a new solution and that's what we're here to talk

about today, positive solution. and they exist. hey exist all across the republican perspective. there are over 150 pieces of health care legislation, in the house of representatives alone, 150. so when you hear the president aif anybody's got a better idea, you know, we'd like to sit down and talk about it? well the fact of the matter we've asked the president to sit down over and over and he has refused at every single term. i want to talk about the principles of health care and talk about h.r. 2300 a bill that i have introduced to the congress for the third year in a row. principles. if you think about them it's important that we follow those principles. you may think that you don't have health care principles but everybody does. everybody. most people have the top three. we need a system that's accessible. everybody needs to get into the system.

we need a system that's affordable. everybody needs to be able to afford it. and we need a system of the highest quality. accessibility, affordability and quality. i add three more to those, responsiveness. it doesn't do you no goo where nobody's behind the desk. that doesn't help anybody who is in need from the health care standpoint. innovation, if we don't incentivize innovation then we don't have the highest quality. people have to go elsewhere. the american people want choices and they should have a right, how they're going to be treated, when they're going to be treated. all those kinds of things. affordability, quality, responsiveness and innovation. those are the principles that we ought to make certain we adhere. to i suggest that if you look at the president's law that his law, the current law of the land

violates every one of those principles. decreasing accessibility. increasing cost which means decreasing affordability. quality, we talked to my medical colleagues. they're er because seeing a decrease in the quality. not because doctors have forgotten how to care for patients but because of the system is making quality that much harder to be able to provide. responsive innovation, government health care. you decide. i don't think they tend to go in the same system as government run often. and in this instance they certainly don't. fewer choices. we hear about this day after day after day with the president's law. .he choices are being limited so if those are the principles and step back and say those are what we agree upon, then let's

look to solutions that actually support those principles, adhere to those principles. h.r. 2300, is the bill i've introduced three times in a row. there are packets outside the room and you're so welcome to pick them up. they describe the bill in some significant detail. of. 2300 is the work product the republican committee two congresses ago. when the president was coming forth with his law, we got together about 20 or 25 people who had an interest in health care within the republican study committee. many vokes who had been working in health care for a long time and came up with an alternative. it's been refined and perfected over the last two congresses. but it does a number of things that we want to touch on because it does the kinds of things that the president's law does not do.

first, you have to have folks covered and have that accessibility to care to coverage and affordability of care of coverage. how do you do that without putting washington in charge? it's relatively simple. every single american ought to are the feasibility and incentive to purchase health coverage. you do that through the tax code, tax deductions, tax credits, refundable tax credits so that every single american regardless of their economic station whatsoever have the financial ability and have an incentive to purchase insurance. and it's something they want for themselves. no mandates. remember, you as an individual every single american knows best what kind of coverage they ought to have. there's no way the government can have a one-size fits all programs because it fits nobody. one size fits nobody. so you can get everybody

covered. we've got the accept the insurance challenges. there are real insurance challenges that existed before the president's law. but the two big one are affordability and preexisting. you ought not lose your insurance if you change your job or you lose your job if you work for a company -- and they provided heam coverage, usually worked for them for 20 or o 40 years you just kept your coverage. the statistics say they will work for between 12 and 15 different employers in their lifetime. there's no reason whatsoever that they ought to have 128 to 15 health care policies if they don't want. well we ought not have a system that forces them. we want every single american to own their coverage regardless of who is paying for it. so if you lose your job, you take it with you. u don't leave your pension

plan to your previous employer? no. nobody in this country ought to be priced out of the market for health coverage if they get a bad diagnosis. i may work for insurance companies. it doesn't work for patient. remember patient centered. if we think about the problem and diagnose the problem appropriately we recognize that there are about 18 million people who fall into that risk. those are the individuals and small group market. they don't have a big pool. they don't have large groups of individuals assists and purchases coverage together so they can't drive down the cost. how do you solve that? you make it so those 18 million people look for others for whom a preexisting system isn't a problem. you create pool mechanisms. not just high risk ones andy

wonder why the price goes up. so that anybody who wants to pool with anybody else we call them individual membership association. you can join with others across state line to be able to get that purchasing power of millions. so that one individual's adverse doesn't drive up the cost for that person or anybody else. and finally we waste huge ams of money in hale care. the biggest way we do that is through the practice of defensive medicine. as i mentioned i was an orthopedic surgeon. i spent 25 years taking care of patients. it's what i did. it's what every doctor does if he or she is honest with you. and they don't -- it's the extra tests that are ordered and examinations that are ordered. they're not done to harm you at all. but if that doctor ever finds himself or herself in a court of law that they can honestly look at the judge and the jury in the eye and say, i don't know what you wanted me to do because

doggone it, i did everything. when in fact everything was rarely necessary to diagnose or treat the patient. now, the standard line on the nservative side of how you ake care of lawsuit abuse. how much does defensive medicine cost? there are a cup of studying out there. jackson health care has a reputable study. estimates 1-3 billion dollars. that's not over a 10-year period of time, ladies and gentlemen. that's one year. that's every year. you add that up and see the amount of dollars that we are weaing in area of health care. so what do we do if we make the right diagnosis. you to make it. so the doctors if they do the right thing, if they order the right tests and do the right

thing as it relates to a patient, not because of what the secretary of health and human services says but it's because what that society says based on appropriate guideline. they ought to be able to dwhruse as an affirmative defense and say i did exactly as i should have done as it relates to the problem that this patient presented to me. >> to use that an as affirmative defense and you raise the bar. you raise it too clear and convincing evidence. then what you do is begin to chip away at that culture of the practice of defensive medicine. remember wasting $8 billion a year. so wlook we've done. h.r. 2300. gets everybody covered. not that the government forces them to buy. without putting washington in charge. and saves hundreds of billions of dollars all without putting washington in charge by one

penny. and the solution that are in h.r. 2300 are included in a number of other pieces of legislation. there's a lot more that we have in common, than not. what we do have a problem is that we stick to principles. we stick to princeable, innovation and quality. if we do that i have great faith that we should end up as a ystem that's truly patient -centered. what we want to make sure is that we make the decision not washington, d.c. thank you so much [applause] >> thank you, dr. price. and now please join me in welcoming dr. rhodes to the stan. [applause] >> well, tom didn't leave a lot for me to say after that i agree with everything. i'm the co-sponsor of this bill.

those of you who don't know who i am, this is starting my six years in congress. i spent 31 years practicing medicine and we started with a group of four doctors. we know because of managed care and other issues that came up in our practice to 100 positions an d to that. i one day come to my wife who is a nurse. and i said pam i'm either going to quit complaining or go to washington. phil said why in the world did you decide to run for congress. you had a great medical practice. i'm going the del -- teleyou the truth, i will say my medical license is still good and i'll write them a prescription if they need it. i got here in 2009 just as the health care debate opened up.

i still find this the most astonishing of off. we have nine positions. because we have 15 now. not one of us was asked one thing about the health care bill. what we thought about it. and i guess nyevly so i guess having gone through health care reform with king care, i thought i had slingts something to happen with the debate. unfortunately nobody cared. basically this affordable care about that we're dealing with now is on steroids. you can not have written something inner complicated because the simplest transaction in the world is where a patient call misoffice, comes in and sees me and leaves and pays the bill. no more complicated than finding a loaf of bread. and now you have to tie everybody into a pretzel to try to get health care.

let me tell you. anaheim a town of 65,000 people. e are a medical referral area. we've had almost 100 layoffs in our local towns. let me tell you those are the best jobs myself. vanderbilt university has laid off a thousands pime. d and cut their program by 10%. does anybody in the world believe that the quality of care goes up when you cut the size of your medical. and it's unbelievable. and you can repeat this story all over the country. and when they tell you it's creating jobs that is absolute nonsense. this sbill creating chaos. i can tell you right now among the medical community. >> well, last year, this last

year, steve who is the chairman r.o.c. i want you to write a republican subject committee. he said i want this bill to have no mandates. preexisting er a condition. malpractice reform. is that all you want me to do. we got to it last year. and this committee i want to go over in just a people, they did a great job. elmers. dr. fleming. dr. todd price to georgia. committee that we have all agreed on.

it is a patient-centered and the prements of the affordable care act is absolutely spot-on right. you want it to increase access and decrease cost. until it occurs between doctors and patients. and going to use myself about how this actually works. they're just six titles to this bill. i brought a couple of things onboard. some of you i've looked around the room. some of you do not. i can tell by looking at you. i know you're holding it. the affordable care act is about two years. remember they were about this thick. this is the s.g.i. reform. how we pay doctors. that's it. and this is 180 page american health care reform bill. 181 pages long that anybody can read it. it first thing it does is

repeals. we have to get rid of this monstrocity and not repeat it. i have spent hours trying to think -- when they said dock, can you just tweak it? eah with a nuclear bomb it's impossible to do because you'll mention one thing and i will tell you four things that's going to change what you just tweaked. so that's number one. and number two, a bought did lot of my baptist friends think the original sin occurred in the garden of eden. e think it's after world war ii when they tweaked tax treatment. en i worked for ob-gyn, my

group, i could provide myself for my group at pretax dollars. i retired and the next day it did, i had to pay first dollar. it cost me more money next day. so what we do with this bill is say ok, each family can take a $20,000 deduction for health care. if your health insurance premium -- and that makes it portable as dr. price talked good -- about -- if your insurance is say $15,000, the $5,000 is money you get back from payroll taxed and income axes the so we massively increase health savings accounts the now almost everybody in our practice, 450 people we provide insurance for selects a health savings

account. why? because it puts the doctor and the patient -- i use a health savings accounts. i have a debit card. i didn't call the insurance company to find out if i needed something. i let my doctor decide it. it is scary when you let one of your medical school classmates operate on you. i did that. i knew i needed it done. i went down there and said i want the cheapest price you've got. and in a second they had their money. didn't fool with the insurance companies or anything the something about the affordable care act that is unknown and after this year the erisa based people, 70 million, lose their tax status. i -- 40ex -- checked, i checked with vanderbilt and my own large center, 40% of the uncollectable debt hospitals have in our area are people is

-- with insurance because the out of pockets are so high now, they don't have enough. what this bill will allow you to do is fund up to what it is up to 12,000 a year. we increased it for people on medicare, who are disabled, for veterans who don't have that option. as dr. price mentioned, we have no mandates for a 26-year-old. well, a 26-year-old, i had to buy all my kids an individual policy before they actually got jobs with health insurance. but let me tell you what you can do if you can buy it across state lines. 26 states already do that. right now the federal government tells you what you have to buy. i'm going to be a little graphic here. let me tell you why that's important and has drinken costs

up to the ceiling. i have been fixed. my wife has been fixed. ok? we've got three kids and both of us determined if we had to raise another kid now we would jump off the capitol into the parking lot face first. but we have to buy pediatriciatric coverage, o.b. covering, all that that i don't need. with health care reform, with malpractice reform, we also include that in our birbling the other reason that's important, i'm going to pass along our tense -- tennessee experience. 1975 when i got out of the army and came back to memphis to finish my training, all the malpractice carriers left the state. every single one. we set up a mutual company, the

doctors did. over half the money paid out of that went to lawyers, not to the injured party. that's terrible. we need a way to ensure we can help people who have been injured by the system. our state set a cap of $750,000 in 2011. the first full year after that implementation the physicians this that states and ultimately the patients who pay those bills, we're not a big state, our premiums went down $100 million in one year. the practice is going to take longer. no ge -- question about that. but being able to buy plans across state lines. that's very important. this bill requires that the hhs secretary tells us what they pay for something so if i go in with my debit card i know what is being paid there. you don't buy a suit of clothes and then they tell you what it

costs later. that's how health care is done and it's ridiculous. the other thing in this bill that is very important is cobra. had a ow, if you have -- to exhaust t have cobra. there are just people out there that have conditions that are incredibly expensive to treat. as a society we have to realize we're going 0 treat it. we're either going to shift look, the or say costs -- costs are there. we are going to shift that with the -- to dreat that high-risk pool. it's an easy bill to read. 181 pages. it will increase access and i can tell you right now it will decrease cost and put some

certainty back. this is the most, i've been a doctor for 44 years and this is the most uncertain i have seen our profession since i have been there. expert senior physicians are looking for exit signs and that's not what they should be doing. they should be looking for the next patient. that man sitting over there has not given up the fight and i have not given up the fight. the american health care system is the best in the world. no question about it. the miracles i could tell you. i will pass one on and then sit down because i want to hear your questions. when i was a medical student in memphis in 1969 and 1970, i went to st. jude's children's hoose. -- hospital. hat was my first pedestrian -- pediatriciatric rotation. 90% of those children died. today, 90% of those children lived.

when the lord walks on the earth again, that will be the first step he takes is at st. jude's children's hospital. every child is treated for free. the question is, are we going to shut off that innovation that is creating these cures that is treating these babies. i forgot to tell you i delivered most of my own voters so that worked out very well! [laughter] with that i will silt down the thank you all. >> thank you dr. and for your commitment to leading the reform efforts we really so badly need to talk about. i'd like to invite the rest of our you panel up now. two of the leading experts on this issue in this town, they really are all over the place and testify before congress and published in various places and they're in demand on the hill with a lot of members who want

to know how to push their reforms forward. i will kick it off with a question. i will address is -- it to nina and grace marie to begin with. there are technical differences between these bills. how do we, the conservative movement interested in pushing reform, how do we deal with the technical differences between the bills and principles and how do we push forward on this? >> you know, there is a lot of call for republicans to get behind one bill. why can't you agree on one bill and pass that? well, i will tell you that republicans do not have a better idea of how to write 2 ks 800 -- 2,800 pages of legislation that raises a trillion in new taxes and still leaves 20 million people uninsured -- uninsured. what they need to do is help the american people understand the vision of course what dr.

price and rowe do. not just the specifics of the bill. you can get very bogged down. there are some minor differences between did dr. roye and dr. price's bill and some of the others that are out there. if you focus on that, and that's what you do when you start legislation, then you wind up having people never understand what the core idea is that unites all of them. i think they both describe very clearly it's about putting patients in charge, real choice, true competition, all the things that obama care promised but none of which they are really delivering. >> i would just add that if you look at the process for delivering what we have today, it was all done behind closed doors and just appeared for a vote on the floor. i think we've forgotten what it's like to go through a normal legislative process. let it go through a markup. that's the process.

move that to the floor and move from there. i think that creates the momentum you also need to really get something past that not only do the members agree on but will have the confidence of their voters when they're voting on it. >> one more question from me. obama care took a lot of our labels. stole them from us. you know, choice, freedom, that kind of stuff. what are the -- one of the lablings that obama care stole from us that are most important to get back and how do we do it? >> the entire dictionary of health care policy. they've taken our game plan and talking points to conceal their liberal policies to enak this health care law. whether it's choice, portability, you can go through all the things. the question is what are -- are the real defining meaning of these words? that's where we're different.

many times we've said -- no one thought before the heal care law that the system was perfect. we all agreed there is a problem but it's where our solutions are that create such vast differences between what the the health care law was and what these congressmen and others are putting forth the >> i think that dr. price said that we've won the debate because the american people see the flaws and problems with obama care but i think we have won the debate in a different way because the other side really had to use affordable choices, security, going to make sure you can keep the plan, keep your doctor. all the promises they made were really things that we've been talking about for the last at least 15, maybe 20 years. but they put this mountain of rules and regulations underneath it that takes it in a completely different direction. so, getting back to those principles, telling the american people that this is what we really would do to get to affordable choices by having

genuine competition, not fake competition, genuine choice, genuine portability, having you decide what kind of health plaun want, not having it dictated by the federal go. i think that's what we do is get back to some real principles that work in the rest of the economy, and not just these fake labels that really have dereceived the american people. >> do you want to -- >> we can open it up -- >> sorry. let me just comment if i way -- may on the ideas of how you get this done. they touched on it. to h.r. 1500 isn't going be the first piece of but what it ought

to be is allowing every single legislator and senator who has an interest and a passion for assisting and solving this to work together in the normal process, the due process of legislation. we don't want this to be a partisan piece be slegs. we want it to be a bipart isan piece of legislation. we want every single member who has an interest to come together and put their two cents in and work it in the committees and on the floor. that's the way you get to a solution that can be embraced. we've seen where partisanship gets you. we're in a position now that shows that. that's not where we want to go. >> the fact that health care is a republican or democrat issue blows my mind. i have neefer -- never seen a republican or democratic heart attack. i have delivered a lot of republican babies, i will tell you that, where i live. but i almost had a joe wilson moment temperature last state of the union where the president at the -- for the

umpteenth time had the audacity to stand up and say the republicans have no ideas when that's all we've worked on for years now. we were at the recreate -- retreat now we attended in maryland and the principles laid out are in my bill and tom's bill too. health savings accounts, liability reform, buying cross state lines, all those with some variation. as grace said, if you look and nitpick these things, you will never get anything through. what we are for is debate it robustly in the light of day, bring it to the house floor, debate re -- robustly in the light of day. thep give it up or down. look, the bill i wrote, it should be amended. i don't even agree with everything in here. amendments the

republicans brought to the committee, not one was brought to the house floor. that's not the way you get the system for all. it's not a democratic or republican issue. it's an american issue. >> ok. let's open up for questions. >> observeaca care has regulations. tell me, if you repeal it and then move to something else what happens those -- to those six feet of regulationed? take me through the mechanics of going from observe ack -- obama care to something else. >> when we are -- repeal the law and replace it with something that works for patients and families, then there will be new law that will have to have the regulations and rules stipulated for it. however, what they would do is

be much more memory -- flexible, perm isive for individuals. it's a culture in washington right now and many areas that says washington knows best. the hhs believes that washington goes -- knows best and it can make the best decisions for patients. we simply don't believe that. i know it's not true. if we were to have our druthers, when that happens, then there will be a culture within that system that will say patients and families and doctors ought to be the ones in charge, not washington. >> the question was what happens to those six feet in do they go away? >> they would be in conflict with current law. then-current law. >> i suggest we all join for a massive weenie roast if that happens, burn it and get rid of it.

we are in a process now of the most disruptive time in my lifetime in health care. the most uncertainty. all patients want is they want to go to their doctor and get their problems taken care of. i've done it for 30 years. the other maddening thing about me for this afford eable care act is the billions we have spent on infrastructure and web we that don't work and have literally spent billions of dollars and have nothing to show for it except failure. >> ok. here? >> thanks. so you're going to have to have obama care repeal. how is it going to get repealed unless the senate goes republican and we get a new president? because -- are you going to require that it's just going to

get so bad, so 0 pressive before 2016 that it's just going to collapse? >> our reference is to repeal the law, we understand that. with you -- but we understand that with harry reid in charge of the senate he's not going to sign a bill that says repeam the signature legislation. the problem we have right now is that real people are getting hurt because of this law. real people's lives are being destroyed because of the law. not just from health care standpoint but because of economic issues. the law doesn't work for employees, employers, doctors shall patients, doesn't work for the federal government from a financing standpoint. there will be a clamor to repeal and replace. whether that happens before the next presidential election or

after because the law fails to be implemented, there are so many delays and changes and postponements in the law now, we haven't -- >> because now they're talking about the individual mandate being extended past 2016. so they just keep changing the law. >> but i hear your question that you are thinking that repealing it, republicans would therefore be responsible for the law failing. the law is failing on its own the we have a paper on our web site of all the changes already made to the law, 17 of them by the white house. that's an acknowledgement that ts -- it's not working and almost every day we hear some new rumor about more changes being played. it's not working. it doesn't work. the -- we have got to start over and the american people now know what they want but they know that obama care is not delivering it.