Gilbert Gutknecht: “I really think that for many years we labored under some unwritten law, if you will, that no good deed goes unpunished.…”

“I really think that for many years we labored under some unwritten law, if you will, that no good deed goes unpunished. If you worked you were punished, if you saved you were punished, if you invested you were punished, if you grew a business and hired people, you were punished. In fact, even in the Medicare system those areas, regions of the country, and I think we all come from areas where we have had relatively low health care costs, as a result, in terms of the Medicare reimbursement schedule we were punished. And that was really the unwritten rule of Washington, and what we are trying to do is change that and try to reverse some of those perverse incentives. And if we do that I think that long term, and as you say, if we can come up with a Medicare system and a Social Security system which uses market principles and the doctrine of enlightened self-interest to get more people to feel as if they are stakeholders in the system, in the long run we will have a better system which provides more value to consumers or to Social Security people, recipients of Medicare treatments, whatever. And that is what we are really trying to do, is reverse those age-old perverse incentives which have been created here in Washington.”