[applause] >> thank you, dr. tsou. we are privileged to welcome dr. gratzer, you are on. >> thank you, mr. chairman and the committee members of congress. mr. chairman of, i'm delighted to have received such a warm introduction listening to the accomplishments he spoke of i was reminded a former colleague who commented me that on paper i seemed quite interesting. [laughter] mr. chairman and members, i've been here for a few moments as have you and i've had the opportunity to hear from a few of your colleagues and a few of my panelists and curiously i have yet to hear the name mentioned once. perhaps so surprising because he has been out of office and when he was an office in fact he wasn't even american, a canadian. but his name jumps to mind today at these hearings because his thoughts on the government health care and as we move forward in congress to debate something larger in the coming months. he is somewhat of a heroic figures in the 1960's he was tasked by the quebec government to consider what would be inappropriate way to organize health care

the statistics don't bear that at all in fact dr. tsou one of your quotes was by and large the quality-of-care is suboptimal. astounding. the american people would be astounded to learn the care they are receiving a suboptimal. in fact if you look a disease specific criteria the care provided in america all across all democratic quadrants of society is second almost to none. we have principles to adhere to in the area of health care. everybody has the top three, access, affordability and quality. i add three to that, responsiveness, innovation and choice. i would suggest to everybody listening that none of the principles of your health care that you provide are improved by the intervention of the federal government. not access, access is limited in the programs run by the federal government, not affordability. all of the cost overruns that occurred in the systems run by the government, medicare, medicaid, indian health service, the veterans' health care certainly not quality when you see the limitation of care that is imposed by the feder

dr. walter tsou it, and other witnesses that you have been so kind to bring here, i just want to leave you with us what i think it is and i want to extend an opportunity for our discussions to go far beyond the a hearing today and i want to make myself available to all of the members. first of all, we have to discuss it. the first thing that occurs to me, and i can say this to my ranking member friend, there is a notion that this single payer health care is off the table. that raises a very important question. if you take the most popular health care reform measure and taken off the table, heaven knows what it is. i guess what you are left with. the one thing i commended the 44th president about when i met with him first after his election and, he said some things that no sitting president in my experience had ever said, he said, i want you to keep in touch with me and keep me advised. we want to know what is happening and what you are thinking about. and is so i praised him for that. he made a lot of other important statements but he wanted to keep in touch was very important to me. we ha