Political Quotes

“I think that our other colleague from Michigan laid it out. What would happen is you would see a dramatic reduction in prices here in the United States. There would be some levelling off. Prices in other places would rise. We can call it reimportation. I like to refer to it as market access. We would go from a closed market to an open market. You have real competition. Once that occurred, what would happen at that point, prices would be reduced here at home. More importantly, I will use the General Motors example. There are businesses all across the country, look at the steel industry, what was really depressing the steel industry was not the competition in prices. It was that our steel industry had all these legacy costs for retirees, health care costs. You get the reductions like this, and the costs for our steel industry would be dramatically reduced, but that is across big businesses and small businesses. Small businesses, only one-third of them provide health care. Two-thirds do not. Why? Because it is too costly. One of the greatest causes of health care inflation is, which is now running at 20-25 percent a year, two factors, the uninsured and prescription medicines. Those are the factors behind health care inflation. We have got to bring this under control. The way to do it is not mandate it. Let us use market forces to do it.”