thanks so much for watching. it's dylan ratigan's birthday today so he's off, but we have someone filling in. welcome to the dylan ratigan show. >> thank you, martin. we've got a great hour ahead. we've got a surprising cure for soaring health costs, we've got the revenge of the electric car, you don't want to miss that, plus new ways to make washington more fun. the show starts right now. good thursday afternoon to you. i'm matt miller in today for dylan ratigan. in our big story, curing health care, a d.r show exclusive.

we have cutting health care costs while boosting the productivity and value. several people came to us about solving the cost equation. we spend about twice per person as other rich nations but with better results. we need open patient access for medical data. why? what you and i spend on health care each year is faster than the rise of inflation. the nation spent 2.5 trillion on health care in 2010. that's trillion with a t. nearly a third of that is wasted on unnecessary tests and medications. another 56 billion is spent on medical liability, mostly defensive medicine, as doctors run up the tab to cover their you-know-what. no wonder we ranked third in cost but number 27 in quality of care. and remember, 56 million americans are still uninsured, and every dollar of health care

waste is someone's dollar of income. they won't give it up without a fight. a task force organizer. welcome, bob. it's great to see you. >> great to see you, matt. >> it's great that they're weighing in with this new report. give us the headlines. what's new here in terms of what people need to know about how we can get a handle on these surging health costs? >> we have a lot of recommendations and people can go to our web site and they'll see the recommendations on the report, but i think the headline here is the importance of data, and particularly sharing data and mining data. and it's something that wouldn't naturally occur to a lot of people, but it turns out upon further inspections, and i'm sure we'll talk, that's one of the keys to bringing the health care costs curve down. >> so give us an example of that. i know one of the things you wrote, you had a huffington post piece out today tied to the report that talked about people

being like pinballs stuck in a pinball system of health care and there needs to be more players. share what you mean by that. >> one section of the report talks about empowering patients. typically, when you go to your doctor and you have to have a surgery, they'll give you either a yes or no recommendation, and a lot of people are scared to contradict their doctor. let's take a lot of surgeries, say prostate cancer a diagnosis, or there may be other kinds of surgeries that are quasi-elective where the doctor should be explaining to you a whole range of choices and talking about the risks and benefits. states have mandated this kind of doctor-patient relationship have found that many times patients will not pick the most invasive and cost-provoking procedure, they may pick something less invasive that's just as good and saves the

country money. it makes them entrepreneurs, if you will, of their own health care. >> so how does the medical profession -- i'm sure you consulted with them as well. some doctors resist the idea that patients come in with reams of stuff they've printed off the internet. some doctors say that's not good information. how do we know how to overrule and make changes to what the doctor might recommend if it's too costly and expensive for what they may prefer? >> there are some states that actually mandate this kind of informed choice, and there are provisions on the affordable care act, the very controversial piece of legislation which actually has a lot of non-controversial things in it which suggest that doctors ought to be doing this, so i think the trend of public policy in this direction, certainly payers can encourage doctors to do this, but again, this is only one small part of the report. the major part of the report has to do with harnessing the value of data and hopefully we can get to that subject.

>> when it comes to harnessing data, the big picture just to remind folks, we're spending 17% gdp in health care in the country, most other advanced nations spend 10 or 11. mighty singapore spent 40% of gdp which obviously trillions of dollars at stake. how does it occur? there was an article a couple days ago that had a couple companies in there that were already using data to predict whether you're likely to go to the hospital next year, whether or not you're taking your medications and this kind of information can spotlight intervention so that doctors or their nurse practitioners can help patients so that they don't have to go to the hospital make sure they're taking their drugs, things like this that could avoid costly procedures later on. the second thing is that large amounts of data can help medical researchers uncover new cures.

and the big problem that we have in health care is that we have databases now that are isolated. they're in doctor's offices which often aren't that useful and then researchers have to assemble data on case by case. we have an example of a report of one such philanthropic effort run by dr. susan love called army of women where they're actually having volunteers of people who both have breast cancer and those who don't, and they're volunteering information about themselves. there are over 350,000 people that have done this. and through large databases, scientists can basically look for patterns, combining information about people's genes with their behavior, with their lab test results and so forth to determine whether there are new cures. and so, really -- and then the third area in which data can help us is that the researchers themselves often do not share data with each other and the nih is in a position to actually force researchers to unlock the key to their research databases so that other researchers can

verify whether or not particular cures or treatments are actually valid. so i think in combination of all these efforts of assembling data and sharing it are really one of the keys to unlocking the cost puzzle. >> and will some of this, then, if we find these patterns, if we access this data in smart ways, will it require both the government and also private pairs to change the way they reimburse providers based on what evidence based this practice is? how will this get driven through the system if it unfolds the way you hope? >> in one sense it can be voluntary voluntary. we hope the organizations like dr. loves who focuses on breast cancer, and others whether it's heart disease or others, they can access their database and ask patients if they want their information shared, and different databases can share with each other. that's certainly one thing that

can be done. the second thing that can be done is that the report urges that health insurers reimburse diagnostic tests. in many cases, if you go get a genetic test or some other kind of diagnostic test, it will not be reimbursed, and yet diagnostic tests with often save lots of money by avoiding lots of other tests and also procedures and surgeries turn out to be unnecessary. >> let me ask you one question about the politics of this kind of data in this approach. i see you guys come down sensibly in my view for doubling down on comparative effectiveness, research, understanding what works and what doesn't so we can drive that best practice through the system. you know in the debate we had over the affordable care act, the republicans or a good chunk of republicans kind of revoltd and demigogued the whole idea of uncle sam driving these things in the center and deciding what will be paid for and what won't be. how do we get to the kind of

common sense you're talking about and transcend that kind of easy to demagogue that position? >> one of the fears was that the government would decide what things would be reimbursed and what aren't, and there was a fear of government takeover of medical decision making. what our report talks about when we get to data is actually multiple databases. we're not talking about one big government database in the sky. what we're talking about is multiple databases that can be assembled and cross linked with each other so researchers can uncover these new mysteriemyste. i know a lot of people's eyes may glaze over, maybe that's a virtue. when you get to technical issues, it's hard to demagogue these issues. who can be against assembling data and analyzing it to come up with better cures for people? i think it would eliminate the

controversy that's generated over the affordable care act. >> from the kaufman foundation. thanks for sharing data on data. great to see you. >> great to see you. talk to you later. congress at work and at play. we'll tell you where lawmakers' approval ratings stand now and dig into the suggestion that all of d.c. needs recessed. apple. just one of the tech titans destroying the open market. channeled childhood, which seems to be a theme here today. the art of the pillow fort. we promise this segment not just for the kids. [ crowd chatters and groans ] ♪

♪ [ male announcer ] hunger getting to you? grab a ritz crackerfuls. made with real cheese and whole grain, it'll help keep you satisfied until your next meal. get hunger before it gets you.

diarrhea, gas or bloating? get ahead of it! one phillips' colon health probiotic cap a day helps defend against digestive issues with three strains of good bacteria. hit me! [ female announcer ] live the regular life. phillips'.

for those of you keeping score at home, the congressional approval rating is up to a whopping 17%. maybe that's because your government charde at wois hard . here's the things they've accomplished in just the past week. they awarded the congressional medal of honor. they passed the sportsmen's bill. they're so hard at work they haven't gotten to the highway bill or a business tax cut, and shockingly, still no new budget. it's no wonder polygamy and caning -- i kid you not -- are more popular than congress. karen finney, susan and bill williams. hi, guys. >> hello.

>> don't read into anything on the polygamy and caning. it's fun. >> good you're smoothing that one out there, matt. >> karen let's start with you. it's a tough week. you got congress obviously doing this kind of silly business, the executive branch between the gsa vegas party and the secret service frol i cicking. it's a trusted government. >> the numbers were gone for two weeks, so if that poll was conducted last week -- >> you're absolutely right. it was conducted the 9th through the 12th town, their numbers go up, i'm not kidding you. there's a historical trend, i'm sure. here's what i have to say on these two scandals. particularly the gsa scandal really plays into people's worst thoughts about government and its dysfunction and how it doesn't work for people. but i will tell you, i had a

little bit of an issue watching some of the quote, unquote outrage from some of the members of congress as they questioned the gsa folks, because let's be honest. members of congress go on plenty of junkets of their own. they take their spouses, they take some advantages thinking they deserve it because they've been in congress, so i think if we're going to talk about this, we have to take a look at the whole nature of something susan has talked about which is really the culture of all of it, basically. >> susan, what do you make of it? first of all, there's just public contempt, even if there's this, they've gone out of town and so we give them a few points up, but there is a toxic view, i think, of the government and people in d.c. >> absolutely. and now the headlines, things can't happen until after the elections. people have to pay their bills every week, every monthsee tion. i also think you happen to see

those numbers go up, and karen was 100% right, that poll was taken through the 9th to the 12th when they were out. now they have to work on reelection, some of them are in primaries now, so they're probably doing a lot of talking and probably trying to put a gloss on themselves. >> there was a quote from mo brooks, the republican from alabama, this is what mo brooks said. he said, free enterprise versus socialism. that's the battle. what you're seeing in the senate and the house is messaging to help the public better understand what the options are. i mean, what baloney, jimmy. nobody is talking about socialism. there's no cardboard distinction between big government and no government. isn't this just more charades? >> i don't know who mr. brooks is nor do i actually care who

mr. brooks is from alabama. what i can tell you is that mr. brooks, whether he was in congress or not, didn't say a word about big government or soci socialistic things. what i do see is congress being at 17%. guess what, 83% of the country thinks they suck. wait till sequestration starts. congress will have to, in a lame duck session, cut $1.1 trillion on their own or it's going to happen by automatic triggers. this congress, in an election year, if i were barack obama, i would do the truman thing, i would run against a do-nothing congress, i would run against senate democrats for controlling the upper chamber. i would run against everything washington, and when 83% of the country thinks they're doing a

crappy job, what a winning message. >> and karen, if we're going to do anything after the election, obviously nothing will happen between now and election, if these folks will ever come together with president leadership to make things happen, can we really survive as a democracy with constant 11%, 9%, 17% approval of the institutions we rely on to actually help solve problems, to take public action? >> no, absolutely not, and this goes back to something i talked about before which is more people are going to have to be engaged in the process and decide enough is enough. the problem we see is a smaller and smaller number of people are voting, and there's the ones making the decision about who gets sent to congress, which means the rest of us, or those who don't vote, we all have to put up with what i would say is pretty pathetic behavior. it would be great to see the american people come together and say, you know what, we want an accountability agenda that includes -- i want to see not

only where your money comes from, but i want to see how you spend your time. i want an accounting since i sent you there and it's my money paying you, do you spend your time talking about socialism or are you spending your time figuring out how to spend portions of the highway bill. but none of that will ever happen if we don't hold them accountable. people will try to get away with as much as they can. >> can i address that real quick? >> only a nanosecond. we have another exciting topic to get to, jimmy. >> karen makes a point about what they do with their time in washington. about 75% of it is dialing for dollars for reelect and 25% of it is actually legislating. wouldn't it be interesting if congress legislated 75% of the time and dialed for dollars 25% of the time. >> good ratio. yet there is another group in washington who thinks the cure for some of what ails washington

may be more play, congress at play. the "washington post" brought this to our attention this morning. a movement sweeping the capital called spacious which advocates recess for adults. they play twister, tug-of-war, moonwalk, hold battles with marshmallow guns in the middle of the workday. a massive pie-throwing fight, plans for a conga line down k street, and they're also serving cookies and milk. suns, y susan, you look like someone who likes cookies and milk. >> i do like cookies and milk, but congress doesn't have time to play. when they play, they get in trouble. they tweet things of themselves they shouldn't be tweeting. they really don't need time to play, they need more time to actually get something done. >> karen, this is also the hard-working private sector people and the lobbyists who are

obviously corrupting the system. if they took a break and kicked back and had a little more twister and marshmallow fights in their life, wouldn't that be the answer? >> no. if at the heart of the idea there is an idea that, hey, we need to actually talk to each other and relate to each other as human beings on a different level and actually try to get something done without demonizing the other side and attacking each other, kind of if you would put your weapons down and come out from behind our barriers, i'm for that. but i agree with susan. the last thing this town needs is more playtime, because as she said, that's where the scandals come from. >> the people at spacious actually had a little survey that all of us took because they were trying to develop some kind of measure of how open to fun you are, how fun-loving, et cetera, and obviously, you know, if you score very high on this very long survey, which all of us took the time to do in our intensive pre-show preparation, i want to put up the scores that we have from our panelists.

we're all very up there. karen, you are the winner on the spacious-o-meter. you have 140. congratulations, you are experiencing what many people dream of in terms of fun. we have jimmy at 128. i came in at 128 as well, and susan, we're a little concerned because you're 106. >> oh, no! >> sometimes you're feeling free and easy but it depends on the day. my question, jimmy, is this correlation or causation? does being open to fun, does that come from being on the mega panel or does being that fun get you on the mega panel? >> when susan first joined the mega panel, i will go ahead and readily and honestly admit that i thought she was a little bit stiff and not nearly as fun. i have since gotten to know miss susan delpersio, and i can tell

you that 106 is a low score. she should be in the high, high 140s, no doubt. >> i told the truth on it, though. >> that could be a whole other mega panel, how truthfully we are on the spacious survey. we're going to have to leave it for now. hold that thought. up ahead, backlack. are amazon bullying companies out of business? are they killing the competition? she joins us next. hi, i just switched jobs, and i want to roll over my old 401(k) into a fidelity ira.

man: okay, no problem. it's easy to get started; i can help you with the paperwork. um...this green line just appeared on my floor. yeah, that's fidelity helping you reach your financial goals. could you hold on a second? it's your money. roll over your old 401(k) into a fidelity ira and take control of your personal economy. this is going to be helpful. call or come in today. fidelity investments. turn here. mine hurt more! mine stopped hurting faster... [ female announcer ] neosporin® plus pain relief starts relieving pain faster and kills more types of infectious bacteria. neosporin® plus pain relief. for a two dollar coupon, visit neosporin.com.

delicious gourmet gravy. and she agrees. with fancy feast gravy lovers, your cat can enjoy the delicious, satisfying taste of gourmet gravy every day. fancy feast. the best ingredient is love.

internet is threatening traditional media unlike any technology before it. in its wake, television, music, magazines and publishing companies struggling to stay afloat. but now it seems a wave of

backlash to the tech giants may be moving in. just last week, apple with several publicers was slapped with an anti-trust lawsuit from the department of justice over overpricing of e-books. most recently the corporation cut ties with the mega store over what they considered scorched earth tactics. that company calling amazon a predator with cut right pricing designed to cut everybody else out of the business. our next guest has written extensively on the need for monopolies. welcome, barry. let me say up front, i love my kindle and yet i gather you figure some way through that love i'm somehow abetting evil. make your case. >> actually, no, i don't believe you're abetting evil by loving

your kindle or loving e-books, for that matter. e-books is a great way to deliver books to american readers. the problem is not the e-book and it's not that we have the internet, the problem is we had a single company, which is amazon, which is basically taking control over an entire marketplace, which is the marketplace for books. and that's a very, very bad thing. >> susan delpersio has got a question? >> yes. one of the things you also mentioned, i read that you mentioned about apple, how they also kind of have this price compete clause with other companies in the silicon valley and how they kind of keep workers, not just products, but workers, their salaries, basically, capped because they don't compete with one another. can you get into that a little bit? >> what we're seeing in the book industry is something that we're seeing throughout the american economy. it's not just on the internet

space, it's in the electronic space, it's in retail. we've seen, over the last 30 years, and it's accelerating over the last few years, this really radical roll-up of control over the u.s. economy to the point where in many ways, the u.s. economy now looks like it did 100 years ago during the year of the plutocrats. that not only affects us as consumers but it affects us as workers. that's what i was writing with respect to apple. you have fewer employers, fewer people with whom to sell your labor. so we get the short end of the stick on both sides, as consumers and as workers. >> karen? >> so the question i have is an issue we get into a lot on this show is what are the policies that are allowing this sort of -- some would call this the free market, although i would

say it maybe the free market run amok a little bit, but clearly this has an impact at the consumer level because it means less choice. from a policy standpoint, what are the things we need to be looking at in order to try to change some of this? >> well, the main problem here is that for 200 years in this country, and this goes all wait back to the tea party, what we did is foremost we went out and fought monopolies, so we made sure we had open markets in which anyone can bring their labor, their goods to market and exchange it with their neighbors, with other communities, and that worked pretty well for 200 years in this country. and then about 30 years ago, in the early years of the reagan administration, a bunch of experts from kind of the far left and the far right got together and inverted that, they flipped that. they essentially overturned our anti-monopoly laws. rather than sort of seeking to make markets, they said, well, instead we're going to

deficiency. if you seek deficiency for too long, you end up with monopoly. >> jimmy? >> barry, this reminds me of amazon. they're the biggest ones in the industry, if you will. they're the only ones in the industry. ask then you like continue to costco where people go in with their wagons and their subarus and they buy 4 billion rolls of toilet tissue. in my opinion, this is not a good thing for the country. i mean, yes, it's consumer choice, but i'd rather go to the strand and buy a book as opposed to buying it from amazon. i would rather go to a local grocery store and buy my beef instead of 70,000 chicken wings which i'm never going to eat in a year. do you think americans are getting to the point where they're saying, wait, hold on. i'd like to go back to the old days when it used to be a lot more decentralized, if you will. >> yes. people do want things

decentralized, but also we have to understand that we don't need to go back to smaller things. we don't need to go back to less efficient things. for instance, you mentioned costco. costco is a pretty good company that's done pretty good things. big box stores per se is not a problem. the problem is when you have a single big box store like a walmart controlling 40, 50, 60% of an entire marketplace. that's a really big problem. if you took walmart and broke it into 100 pieces, that's not a problem. >> let me ask you one question that i have, barry, that i get confused by. as an author, and i know you are, too, obviously i love the idea of people paying for books, but as a consumer, i guess something that baffle me see about your case is on e-books, the marginal cost of producing that extra book is close to zero because they're not actually producing a book. they're just sending it over the ether to our hand-held devices, so the idea that $9.99 is

predatory, it actually feels to me as a consumer that $9.99 is gouging when the cost of it is close to zero. what am i miss sinmissing? >> the issue of e-books, the less costly the book, that's a good thing. the less costly book in the hands of american citizens the better. the question is, how do you get it at cost? do you get it through the market or do you get it through the dictates of a single authoritarian power? what's interesting about this case that the d.o.j. has been bringing into the -- against the publishers is that the system they created, this agency system of pricing, actually led over the period from december of 2010 to december 2011, it actually lowered the price of e-books faster than amazon was doing it. competition in the open market works, and it is also

politically much, much, much safer. >> and so, just briefly, ten years from now shouldn't e-books cost a buck or two just like the old books that are now patent? if you want to buy shakespeare or the collected poems of emily dickinson, it costs 99 cents or something on kindle. >> assume the large production books will cost very little ten years from now, but it's really something that should be decided by the writers and the publishers and the readers in an open market. the price for every book could be very different one from the next. that's actual the beauty of an open market. every person gets exactly what they want. >> all right. barry lind from the new american foundation reminding us of competition. thank you for sharing that information to us today. thanks to our mega panel which i want to remind you is more popular than caning or political my or congress. the mega panel comes out on top.

thanks, guys. great to see you, as always. >> thanks, matt. bracing o-- embracing our primal drive to build pillow forts. [ junior ] i played professional basketball for 12 years.

today i own 165 wendy's restaurants. and i get my financing from ge capital. but i also get stuff that goes way beyond banking. we not only lend people money, we help them save it. [ junior ] ge engineers found ways to cut my energy use. [ cheryl ] more efficient lighting helps junior stay open later... [ junior ] and serve more customers. so you're not just getting financial capital... [ cheryl ] you're also getting human capital. not just money. knowledge. [ junior ] ge capital. they're not just bankers... we're builders. [ junior ] ...and they've helped build my business.

pillow forted. we've all built one at some point as a kid or with a kid or

just because. these assortment of household items captivate our minds, but why? put simply, we all like spaces that fit us. so for those big and small, the "new york times" contacted experts for the pillow fort tips we all need. here are a few. first, put the heavy stuff on the bottom. stacked cushioned on a pillow is a collapse waiting to happen. second, use furniture as a base. a desk already has a pre-made cave and a couch can make an excellent supporting wall. third, think outside the box. umbrellas are solid roofs while that cardboard box makes the perfect extra room. but the last bit of advice may be the toughest. remember, it's for the kids. next, electric car makers may finally have reason to

dance. so what's changed? [ female announcer ] women have made it the number one selling anti-aging cream undeniably. it creamed unbelievably a $500 cream and now women have made regenerist microsculpting cream also unscented. women love it. in original and also fragrance-free. hey, dad, you think i could drive? i'll tell you what -- when we stop to fill it up. ♪ ♪ [ son ] you realize, it's gotta run out sometime. [ male announcer ] jetta tdi clean diesel. the turbo that gets 42 miles per gallon. that's the power of german engineering. ♪

of single mile credit cards. for too long, people have settled for single miles. battle speech right? may i? with the capital one venture card, [ horse neighs ] you'll earn double miles on every purchase, every day! [ visigoths cheer ] hawaii, here we come. [ alec ] so sign up today for a venture card at capitalone.com. and start earning double. [ all ] double miles! [ brays ] what's in your wallet? can you play games on that? not on the runway. no. aspirin for pain? aspirin is just old school. people will have doubts about taking aspirin for pain. that's why we developed bayer advanced aspirin with micro particles. it enters the bloodstream fast and rushes relief to the site of pain. we know it works. now we're challenging you to put it to the test. we're giving away one hundred thousand bottles absolutely free through april 25th. so you can try it yourself and tell us what you think. visit fastreliefchallenge.com to get your free bottle.

on december 21st polar shifts will reverse the earth's gravitational pull and hurtle us all into space. which would render retirement planning unnecessary. but say the sun rises on december 22nd, and you still need to retire. td ameritrade's investment consultants can help you build a plan that fits your life. we'll even throw in up to $600 when you open a new account or roll over an old 401(k). so who's in control now, mayans? that's good morning, veggie style. hmmm. for half the calories plus veggie nutrition. could've had a v8.

you're probably muddling through allergies. try zyrtec® for powerful allergy relief. and zyrtec® is different than claritin® because it starts working faster on the first day you take it. zyrtec®. love the air. some relief for drivers nationwide, albeit little relief. gas prices down below $3.89 a gallon. that growing number at the pump turning many americans to electric cars. besides a saving on gas, they're also good for the environment,

something they're pointing out during green week at universal. our guest went into it in his documentary "veno to t orko -- the electric car." what is bringing the electric car back now? >> i think high gas prices is a lot of it. 2008 they had the first spike in gas prices and the car makers were like, damn, we don't have anything to sell to the consumers. there is a lot of pressure on them and also the federal government who was looking to get us off so much foreign oil kbortd a imported and they started making these cars. it took five or six years to develop them and now they're finally getting on the market. >> you have some humor you

track. tell us about the man at general motors. what role did he play in the renaissance of electric? >> yeah, bob has been at chrysler and ford and bmw. he is like mr. detroit. unbelievably, he changed his petition on electric cars. he voted against electric cars in the '90s when gm had a car there, and he became a champion for the volt at gm. in fact, this week he's even in the position of defending the volt on right wing radio and things like that because he can't belief it's become such a political issue. >> are there a standard number of volts hitting the market soon? how big are they going to become? >> they're just coming to market and they're under a lot of pressure in the press for one reason or another. this is where we're going, because as gas prices go up, you can drive a volt on a dollar a gallon on electricity. i think they'll be very successful over the next five

years. >> refresh people's understanding of how this actually works. do you have to have some kind of charger in your house? do you need charging stations on the road? in other words, do we need to have some kind of infrastructure of recharging stations for this to become really widespread? >> i think the car company has been able to figure out you have to plug it into any outlet, so if you have a garage, you can plug it in and overnight fill it with electricity. if you want to put in a fast charger that can charge your car in a couple hours, or go to a parking meter that's retrofitted for charging, that's a possibility, too. the whole thing is about having options as people are thinking about this for the first time. >> i want to put up a sound bite we have from one of the main characters, the ceo of nissan. let's give a listen to how he's described in the movie and then i'll get you to talk more about him. >> there is no give in that man, there is no dream in that man. he's not a visionary. he is a capitalist, an

enormously controlled, desperately driven smart man who measures success in life by dollars and euros. carl stone doesn't get up in the morning unless there's money in it. >> the point being, chris, that this is being based not on some green notion but based on solid economics in terms of the nissan ceo. >> yeah, precisely. the electric car is only going to work if it makes sense economically. there's great there's environmental reasons for the car, that's why i was drawn to it, but ultimately the car companies have to see they'll make money. carlos put $6 billion on the leaf and the electric cars nissan will be rolling out. he's thinking long term future, and i think he's right. >> there are a lot of people who wonder -- you hear different things about whether a hybrid is actually good for the environment or better than an electric car. what is your research and what's

your judgment, having looked into this for a long time? how should we think about hybrid versus electric as part of a long-term move toward carbon free environment? >> for most people it's like, how do i spend less money on gasoline? the hybrid is a terrific way to do that because it gets like 50 miles to the gallon. once you can plug in a car, and that's where the electric car comes in, either a plug-in hybrid or pure electric, you don't have to use gasoline at all. the electric car is pretty cheap, and so people are finally saying, i don't have to use gas all the time. >> i think it's a quote from the ceo of ford saying the batteries still run them something like 12,000 to $15,000 to manufacture and install. what will it take and how long for us to kind of move down the technology curve on this so this all becomes more affordable? >> in the film, we try to cover different kinds of approaches to what's the right kind of electric car.

gm decided to go with a smaller battery pack and have backed-up gasoline. thee saun and others, those cars are all pure batteries. i think as you look down the road at more electric cars and people try them and actually get to drive them, they'll be able to drop the price. even now i think you can lease an electric car for around $350 a month. it's getting affordable for more and more people. >> you not only focus on some of the big car companies that are doing this, but there's one guy you profile who is kind of an individual tinkerer or inventor named greg gadget abbott. we've got a little exchange from the film i want to play for you and then you can tell us briefly what you think about it. >> around the world, an underground movement is growing. these people are making their own electric cars right here and right now. >> i'm gadget. i've been living and working in

this warehouse for 16 years, and for the past couple years, i've been doing electric cars. what i do is take a car and change it from gas power to electric. it's a lot cleaner to take an existing car rather than making a new one from scratch. >> so what wroel do individual inventors play in the evolution of this whole space? >> huge. when car companies weren't interested, the car companies didn't want to do it. the only people doing it were garage mechanics saying, let's take that cool porsche, take the engine out and make it run on solar. independents were the one making these changes, and we were just lucky that the industry began changing on top of what gadget was able to do with old cars. >> ten years from now, how big a percentage of the car fleet is this going to become? give us your best sense right now. >> the best thing we can hope for is that we finally have more and more options.

i don't think you have an all electric car fleet in the next 20 years, but i think they'll start to come in and people will say, this is good, and there will be an option. i think in the next ten years you'll really see plug-in cars take off. >> chris payne, the documentary is "revenge of the electric car." it's on pbs tonight, 10:00 p.m. thanks for taking the time and congratulations on the film. >> thanks, matt. coming up on "hardball." what the new poll is revealing about the 2012 race. the real alec. okay, maybe not that alec.

at liberty mutual, we know how much you count on your car, and how much the people in your life count on you. that's why we offer accident forgiveness, where your price won't increase due to your first accident. we also offer a hassle-free lifetime repair guarantee, where the repairs made on your car are guaranteed for life, or they're on us. these are just two of the valuable features you can expect from liberty mutual. plus, when you insure both your home and car with us, it could save you time and money. at liberty mutual, we help you move on with your life, so get the insurance responsible drivers like you deserve. call us at... or visit your local liberty mutual office, where an agent can help you find the policy that's right for you.

liberty mutual insurance, responsibility -- what's your policy? you know, those farmers, those foragers, those fishermen.... for me, it's really about building this extraordinary community. american express is passionate about the same thing. they're one of those partners that i would really rely on whether it's finding new customers, or, a new location for my next restaurant. when we all come together, my restaurants, my partners, and the community amazing things happen. to me, that's the membership effect.

think you know how a bill becomes a law? don't be so sure. here is krystal ball with her daily rant. take it away. >> thanks, matt. if you were a kid like me, you remember some of the education rocks. here is "i'm just a bill." >> he called his local congressman and said, you're right, there should be a law. he rolled me out, introduced me to congress and i became a bill. >> there's one tiny problem. sadly, this is not at all how bills actually become law now. where are the lobbyists and sup superpacs? probably the greatest per version of our democratic progress, however, has come from a surprising place, public charities. organizations like the

legislative exchange council or americans for life are using a 501c3 charity status. they provide a vehicle to provide inference at wholesale and to get a tax break while doing it. here's how the supposed charities distort and undermine our democracy. rather than gleaning bill ideas from the local communities schoolhouse rock style, they prompt legislators to push rather than lawmakers drafting community-appropriate bills with skilled staff. they download boilerplate bills. in alec's case, the model legislation is frequently written by those who will benefit from its passage. both organizations provide expert testimony, talking points, briefs and any other assistance the legislation might need to enforce their paint by numbers bill in the law.

public outcry has been originated by liberals concerned about the type of far right legislation they're pushing. legislation like the stand your ground law. these protests, however, have become powerful because when ordinary people learn about alec and au tactics, they are appalled. they have also learned public organization is bad for business. in other words, alec and aul depend on secrecy for survival. look, we're not so naive to believe our functions are exactly like the schoolhouse ideal, but is it too much that we should know about the laws impacting our families and communities? is it so unrealistic to request that taxpayer subsidize real charities rather than parse sonniso soning

l lobbying shots? want to take our country back? start here. matt? >> impassioned as always. i love your use of schoolhouse rock. it was big in our house. remember ♪ conjunction junction, what's your function ♪ >> i take your point on the stand your ground laws and all the stuff that alec has been involved in, but it's true liberal groups do use 501c3's, so it's not the tools per se, it's whether it's being used for good or evil, right? >> there's nothing on the left that's equivalent to alec, but the answer here is the reason the pushback has been successful is because we've had some transparency around who is actually fu