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A candid conversation with Hillary Clinton
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I really believe, too, that the whole extent of the problems in our health care system are becoming clearer to people. It’s not only the fact that we’ve got nearly 47 million uninsured people, but so many millions more are essentially uninsured, because even though they have an insurance policy, when they really need it, the insurance company says, “Just kidding,” you know, “We’re not going to give your doctor permission to, you know, perform that procedure.”
(LAUGHTER)
SCARBOROUGH: And that’s hitting everybody. You know, it’s so funny, Senator—not so funny, it’s unfortunate, but when you hire people these days and when I’ve tried to hire some people to come on and work with me, and so few people want to do that anyway—we have Willie Geist here because he’s been unemployed for so long...
(LAUGHTER)
... but it used to be the first question people would ask you had to do with salary. Now, anybody that has a family, always, the first question they ask me has to do with health care. We have not had really had this debate over the past several years on issues that matter to me.
Like for instance, I’ve got a child that’s got Asberger’s. I am sure that it was connected to vaccines back in the 1980s, but there are a lot of issues dealing even with child health care that just haven’t been addressed, that obviously impact Republicans, Democrats...
CLINTON: Absolutely.
You know, Joe, one of the things that I’ve worked on for a long time is how we, number one, figure out what we’re supposed to do to treat kids. Because, you know, kids are not just miniature adults, you know.
They have different physical and psychological needs.
You might have seen a big story recently about, you know, drug companies pushing all these drugs onto kids.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
CLINTON: And we don’t do adequate testing.
I passed the first laws back in the Clinton administration and then a while back in the Senate we just reauthorized a requirement that we’ve got to start testing things to see whether they’re safe for kids and what dosage you really need. You don’t say, “Oh, OK, here’s the adult dosage of, you know, say, 40 milligrams. Let’s just cut it in half because the kid is about, you know, half the size.” That’s just not the way to do this.
And the other problem is, we know there are environmental effects; I mean, whether, as you suggest, you know, perhaps a vaccine or some other exposures that interact with the genetic makeup of kids.
This is all a new frontier. But if you look at what the incentives in our health care system are, it’s really not to, you know, zero in on the prevention and look at the entire, you know, holistic picture. You know, we are set up to treat people once they’re already sick. And this is just not sensible anymore.
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SCARBOROUGH: It’s insane. It’s false economy. You have a diabetic that cannot get the insurance company to give them money for treatment, and yet the same insurance company will pay when they go back to the hospital to get a leg amputated. And it is so shortsighted. We’ve been engaging in false economy for so long and it’s problematic.
You talk about new frontiers. Obviously, you, running as a female for the presidency, it scares a lot of people like Willie Geist.
(LAUGHTER)
Me, I’m hip to it. I’m open-minded, as you know. I’m a uniter not a divider.
(LAUGHTER)
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