Oct. 30 Democratic debate transcript

Williams: I have to keep you to time, Senator.

Thank you.

We're going to continue this notion of a lightning round after a quick break.

We're going to start our next segment with a question handed to me by a student here at Drexel today.

So, again, our last break now, and a short one. We will continue from Philadelphia right after this.

(Commercial break)

Williams: We are back at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Something we'd like to institute as the lightning round -- we've put a clock -- a noise perhaps not loud or severe enough on the screen as we tried this out in the previous segment.

(Laughter)

We're going to try to get tougher and heavier concerning our enforcement.

I promised to begin with a question handed me by a Drexel student today.

It dovetails -- Senator Dodd, we will start with you -- it dovetails with what physicians have asked me to ask in this room to this group here tonight.

With so many young people choosing not to go into medicine, so many veteran physicians choosing to get out or losing heart because their ability to earn an income is going down. How do you expect this nation to attract, to continue to attract quality people to medicine, senator?

Dodd: Well, a couple of things very quickly again in 30 seconds here. But first, obviously providing some benefits to people who choose to go into that educational field and profession so we can attract them to work in areas that they are needed, and that certainly needs to be done.

I believe there's an answer to the medical malpractice issue, not the ones that Republicans have been proposing, but that's one of the issues that people are concerned about.

And part of a larger health care plan ought to be a part of that as we consider universality and other elements here to make sure that this profession becomes one, where the cost of insurance, the cost of other items here are not going to be so excessive that you'd be discouraged from going in that direction.

Williams: Senator, thank you.

Senator Biden?

Biden: You got to help them pay off their education. They start off in the hole. They graduate and have these gigantic bills, 40,000 bucks a year. They graduate hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

You got to give them ability to write that off if they engage in public service, move into areas where they need doctors, number one.

Now, number two, you got to get the insurance company out of looking over their shoulders and everything. They know the decisions to make. They know what they should be doing. And they should be rewarded for their decisions.

The light's on, and I want you to know I stay inside my time.

Williams: Very good. It's our new tough guy policy.

(Laughter)

Senator, thank you.

Senator Edwards?

Edwards: What we need is a universal health care system that gets doctors out of the business of having to deal with insurance companies on a daily basis, to protect them from that.

But I want to talk about another piece of this, which is we have a nursing crisis in America, a serious nursing crisis. So what we need to do is expand our nursing schools, give scholarships to young people who are willing, when they go to nursing school, to commit to come out and go to the places that are underserved.

We need to get rid of things like mandatory overtime. We need to have safer staff-to-patient ratios so that we can deal with this crisis, for the men and women who actually provide a huge amount of the health care in this country.

Williams: Senator, thank you.

Senator Clinton?

Clinton: Well, again, I agree with everything that has been said. In my proposal, for the American Health Choices plan, we basically give the insurance companies an ultimatum. They have to get into the business of actually providing insurance, instead of trying to avoid covering people.

They cannot deny people coverage. They cannot have a pre- existing condition which is not covered.

That is one of the biggest problems that doctors face. They face this constant barrage of harassment and bureaucratization from the private insurance world.

We also need to clean up Medicare and Medicaid. They're not as friendly as they need to be, either.

Williams: Senator, thank you.

Senator Obama?

Obama: We need to deal with the insurance companies. On Medicare and Medicaid, the reimbursement system is not working the way it should. And by the way, instituting a universal health-care system that emphasizes prevention will free up dollars that potentially then can go to reimbursing doctors a little bit more.

But we've got to deal with the cost of medical education. We have to deal with college costs generally, and that's why I put forward proposals to get banks and middle men out of the process and expand national service to encourage young people to go into these helping professions where we need a lot more work.

Williams: Senator, thank you.

Congressman?

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