Texas 2006 Senate Debate: on Health Care

Barbara Radnofsky: Don’t criminalize Medicare negotiating for drug prices

HUTCHISON: We should look at that, but the plan was a different type of plan, where we had private companies competing, and it is working very well. The “donut hole” [of missed coverage] gives people the choice to cover the donut hole, or they don’t have to, and that determines their cost.

RADNOFSKY: That response addressed the donut hole, not the criminalization of US government conduct. Of course Medicare should be allowed to use its massive bargaining power to negotiate better prices for drugs. It consistently works well for the VA. The only people who are in favor of criminalizing the negotiation of drug prices are people who profit from selling drugs.

JAMESON: Tweaking a bankrupt system is a parlor game. We need a real solution. I’m calling for universal mandatory health insurance.

Kay Bailey Hutchison: Rx Plan has private companies competing to lower drug prices

HUTCHISON: We should look at that, but the plan was a different type of plan, where we had private companies competing, and it is working very well. The “donut hole” [of missed coverage] gives people the choice to cover the donut hole, or they don’t have to, and that determines their cost.

RADNOFSKY: That response addressed the donut hole, not the criminalization of US government conduct. Of course Medicare should be allowed to use its massive bargaining power to negotiate better prices for drugs. It consistently works well for the VA. The only people who are in favor of criminalizing the negotiation of drug prices are people who profit from selling drugs.

JAMESON: Tweaking a bankrupt system is a parlor game. We need a real solution. I’m calling for universal mandatory health insurance.

Scott Jameson: Supports universal mandatory health insurance

It doesn’t seem like a classic libertarian position to require everybody to have to do something. But someone coming across a catastrophic financial loss-that hurts me as a member of the community.

Plus having everyone in a universal risk pool is going to lower the cost for everyone who already DOES have insurance. You’re going to bring in millions of health people who are substantially less likely to make a claim.

Also it would allow us to cover people who are too risky to cover. We can bring in everybody with a universal mandatory healthcare system similar to what we have for liability insurance for automobiles.

How we’re going to pay for this is slowly begin to roll back payroll taxes so individual people can make their own healthcare decisions.