[size=13pt]John Stossel talks about healthcare[/size]



GLENN: Hello, you sick twisted freak. This is Closed Line Friday. Going to talk to John Stossel. He had a conversation with Michael Moore. I don't know if the I can sit in the same room with that guy but that's the story. We'll talk to him. He's got an interview with Michael Moore on ABC tonight. Also Bush says success now is allowing us to have a gradual troop cut. I hope we're not doing that for political reasons. I hope he's doing that because the general has told him we can do that. I don't understand it but if that came from the -- that guy came from the guy in the green suit and not the blue suit, I'm okay with it.

San Francisco is to offer healthcare now for every uninsured adult. This is the front page of the New York Times and it starts in, "Since contracting pole I can't at the age 2, Yen-Ling Ho has lived with pain most of her 52 years. Although she immigrated here from Hong Kong last year, the soreness in her back and joints proved too debilitating for her to work. That also meant she didn't want to have health insurance. Not carrying a heavy burden for her daughter, who was already paying her living expenses." .

So now you've got somebody who's come here, has lived in pain for 52 years, has come here, moved to San Francisco, lived here a year and the City is using this as someone who we need to get health insurance for. No problem. You know, I'm sorry that Yen-Ling Ho has lived in pain her whole life but what this reminds me of is exactly the stories that were in the newspaper that gave us the New Deal. Quite frankly on the dark side of things, it's always, always some little story that pulls at your heart string that gets you to do things that you just shouldn't do. It was a little baby. A little baby knock, I think, a little baby that Hitler rushed to the aid for to put out of his misery that caused the extermination camps or was the one that first started it. You can't get caught up into the emotion of this stuff. That's the way -- I mean, it kills me. They always say that conservatives are the ones that are just, they just, they don't think things through. And yet every time it's something like this. If private sector wants to help Yen Ling Ho ease her pain, if somebody wants to swoop in and help her, that's great. Why is that, why is that taxpayers' responsibility? Why?

Now, actually I'm okay with this story. I'm okay with this story if it happened just in San Francisco. If San Francisco wants to say we're going to do universal healthcare for everyone that lives in San Francisco and the State of California wrote it into their Constitution that whatever San Francisco wants to do, we're not paying for. If San Francisco goes out of business, it's San Francisco's fault. We're not bailing them out. We're not going to -- we're not going to have them bleed into their healthcare system. They'll never do it. Why? Because the idea of socialism is just too attractive to too many politicians. Being out there and being able to buy votes through whatever it is is just too attractive. But if San Francisco wanted to be the testing ground for something like this and allow it to fail, or succeed -- it's going to fail, it always does. But succeed or fail, allow it to stand on its own two feet, I'd be all for it. But what will happen is it will start to bleed out and it will start to get into the state funds. And then the state will say, well, we've got to have this; we can't afford this. And then the Feds will do it.

San Francisco offering care now to every uninsured adult. Do we have our mad John Stossel on yet?

STOSSEL: Yes, you do. I agree with you. Let states or cities experiment with their socialist ideas and we can see if they work or fail, and frankly they won work. So we can watch them fail and learn from that.

GLENN: Exactly right. I mean, John, have you read the book yet, The Forgotten Man, yet?

STOSSEL: No.

GLENN: Oh, you've got to read it. I read it about four weeks ago and been talking about it. And Giuliani was on just last week and he said, boy, you want to understand what's coming, understand how -- what happened during the Depression and how it's all repeating itself with healthcare and everything else, you've got to read The Forgotten Man; it's unbelievable, but we've got to learn from history.

Why is it or how is it that -- and maybe in your travels. I don't know if you addressed this all in your special tonight, but you're talking to people who want this universal healthcare. How is it that the people who are jamming this down or want to jam this down the throat of Americans, who are just saying that we've got to have this, got to have this, got to have this are the same people who are constantly campaigning against Republicans, against the tax cuts because they say we can't afford it because the deficit is too big? How are they expecting us to pay for universal healthcare?

STOSSEL: That's another good question. They don't think about it that way. They think by paying for healthcare in the government, you will give the economy a boost because then employers won't have to pay. [b]

GLENN: But where are they getting -- it's not like the treasury's just printing money. The money is going to come from the companies because they are going to pay higher taxes.

[b]STOSSEL: Plus, you think health care's expensive now, wait until you see how expensive it is when it's free because when you don't pay for it, then you want more. You want everything.

GLENN: Well, isn't that the -- isn't that really the problem now? Insurance really is a problem. I mean, if you knew you had, except for catastrophic, if you had a certain amount of money to spend, wouldn't you be -- wouldn't you shop around more?

[b]STOSSEL: Yeah. We show the beauty of that tonight and how that's changing people's lives. But what if you had grocery insurance? Think how that would change your behavior? You'd go to the grocery store and you'd buy steak and lobster. You wouldn't care what anything costs. Hey, the insurance company's paying. And then you went to the checkout. There would be all these people demanding paperwork and forms and telling you which food you could and could not buy. If you had it for -- if car insurance were treated the way health insurance is, it would cover gasoline and oil changes and you wouldn't care what gas costs. Yet this is how we handle healthcare and we think that's normal. [b]

GLENN: John, help me just think this through logically because this really bothers me. They say that healthcare is a universal right. Healthcare being a universal right on the scale of things that are the most important to me, if I say I've got to have this or I die, water would be first, food would be a universal right second. And then maybe healthcare would be third. I mean, security would be up there before healthcare. Why does no one -- is it just because it shows how ridiculous it is? Why does no one say food is a universal right?

STOSSEL: You could add in clothing and shelter to the list, too. I think a lot of the left does say that and they say we're a rich country, these are all important things. Therefore Government should provide them. But it does open them up to the point that the private sector is pretty good at getting people food, clothing and shelter and does it better than governments ever have. Of course, that argument isn't convincing because we've got all these farm subsidies because people say we can't rely on the private market to give us food.

GLENN: John, you, for your special tonight, you sat down with Michael Moore. Describe what it's like to sit down with Michael Moore.

STOSSEL: Well, he was actually very charming. He said he loved the interview with me because he never gets to really argument about the beauties of socialism and take some time and do it seriously. And he didn't -- I was moderately hostile. He did not get testy and we had good fun exchanges that I think shed light on the subject.

GLENN: Did he actually use the word "Socialism"?

STOSSEL: Yes. Well, he sometimes talks about socialism, state capitalism he uses sometimes.

GLENN: State capitalism.

[b]STOSSEL: Like high school economics courses. And he believes, his point, of course, is that the Government gets his father's Social Security check to him every month and that shows that Government can do things well. The fact that Social Security is bankrupt and isn't going to keep doing that eludes him. The idea that that's pretty simple. And the post office doesn't work half as well as UPS or Federal Express eludes him. And healthcare's complicated. I hit him with: Look, the best that Government could do producing cars is the Trabant and that was the East German car. I pulled out of a picture of it. He said, it's terrible, we can't have that, get rid of that.

But government healthcare would become that in good time. I mean, these socialistic problems always work for a while. Took the Soviet Union 70 years to fail. You get the eager beavers to come in, the peace corps does a good job. But then because government doesn't change, it gradually atrophies. But people don't know what they're missing. At the VA they don't know that they don't get 80% of the drugs that are available. They think they're getting good care. Same is true in France and Canada, except for the people who are pulling their own teeth because they can't get to a dentist. [/b]

GLENN: Did you see in Time magazine there's a lead story, the cover this week is the call for national service?

STOSSEL: Yes.

GLENN: There's a call for national service. You've got to read this article. It's dumbfounding.

STOSSEL: Time is disgusting week after week. They are worse be Newsweek which is pretty disgusting. I started to read instead a magazine called the Leak which gives you a summary from left and right of what's going on in the world.

GLENN: I just can't believe that this -- I mean, here we are at a place where our deficit is not $6 trillion. It's $56 trillion when you figure in all the things that they've taken off the books and hidden and put in IOUs. It's $56 trillion. And they're talking in Time magazine about how there needs to be this call for national service and we need to have people that do, you know, work on global warming and go in the peace corps and Americorp and go teach and everything else, which is all great, pie in the sky stuff. One of the deals is that everyone -- that government should force everyone to have mandatory service, that it would be two-year forced service at the end of high school and every child born in America would get a $5,000 U.S. Treasury bond at birth. It would cost $20 billion a year. In it they say, well, the United States would be great because you'd get all that service, plus you'd get a billion dollars back for those who didn't cash that in every year. And -- and this is the most amazing part. I think this woman is gearing up to offer us the new New Deal.

STOSSEL: No question, I think they all are. I think the young people, when I speak at colleges, they have this -- it's intuitive to think big Mommy/daddy government can provide and they should fix things for people. And it's only through -- I mean, I believe that when I started reporting, it was only 20 years of consumer reporting that finally woke me up to the fact that those plans don't work as free people spontaneously working together for their own interests.

GLENN: So you started, when you started originally, you were a pie in the sky Mommy and Daddy government guy?

STOSSEL: Yeah. How do you think I got into television? I was regarded as a liberal.

GLENN: The special tonight, what was the thing that you found the most eye-opening? What is the thing that you say, when America sees this, they are going to be bowled over?

STOSSEL: Well, people pulling their own teeth, people waiting -- you know, lottery in some towns in Canada hoping to get a family doctor. That the utopia portrayed by Michael Moore is, of course, not that. And the beauty, the excitement in the people who have health savings accounts who say, wow, suddenly I'm spending my own money on healthcare; I own my own healthcare, I'm making the decisions. I can go to my accupunturist, or my psychic healer. I think some of them are spending it on stupid things they don't believe in, but it's their choice. And for the first time they're asking doctors 'does it have to cost $200' and the doctor says 'oh really, you're going to pay me cash, I don't have to deal with the insurance paperwork? Well, $100' And then the doctor doesn't even know where to put it, they haven't had a cash box in the office for so long. The beauty of beginning to impose a market in healthcare, that's exciting to.

GLENN: Have you been following what's happening in Wisconsin with the argument on whether they should have state healthcare, universal state healthcare? Again, if states want to do it, and they allow me to move my company out of that state. I'm totally fine with it. As long as I have a choice.

[b]STOSSEL: Go on Wisconsin. Let them show us the beauty of socialist healthcare. And when they fail, I feel bad for the people in Wisconsin, but then at least the rest of America will wake up. I feel bad about the fall of the Soviet Union, it once was our model for what doesn't work. Now all we have is Cuba, North Korea, the post office and the motor vehicle division, without these examples of failure people intuitively embrace government control.[/b

GLENN: Alright, John Stossel tonight on ABC at 10. The special on healthcare, boy I gotta tell ya, you better arm yourself America with this kind of information. You better know what you're talking about because this thing is coming and it's going to be jammed down your throat. This is going to be . . . the argument is going to be two-fold - who's the best to protect and defend us, and then the other is going to be who's the best to take care of us and hold our hand and make sure that the economy, that we'll be able to eat and healthcare and every other free thing from the government. Arm yourself with this information, because this debate is coming in healthcare is coming your way. John thanks man.

John Stossel: Thank you.