Jim Baird: “I want to thank my colleague particularly for raising some issues that we had not addressed before and also for raising…”

“I want to thank my colleague particularly for raising some issues that we had not addressed before and also for raising the important point about how much it costs us in our efforts to constrain costs when people are forced to go home from the hospital, where they do not get the care they need, they develop infections and then are forced to come back, or when medication regimens are cut off in the middle of someone's prescribed treatment regimen and they worsen in their illness. When physicians or other health care providers are forced to spend their days on the phone begging for the treatment that they know their patient needs, that costs. When hospitals are understaffed and when the staff that is there it is not at the level of professional training, that costs. When everybody talks about, those on the other side, on the Patients' Bill of Rights against it, they say it might raise costs. We need to counter, there are costs associated with the status quo and those costs are the cost in people's lives, the cost in the quality of care. The reason people oppose this is because the costs are borne by the providers and by the public while the profits are privatized. That is the problem with it.”