W. Todd Akin

We're about to start on a journey on an interesting topic of discussion and one that has hit the papers and one that could very much affect the shaping of how the world develops and the safety of the world. And that is the new discussion…

First of all, the President said all of the options are on the table. And here we go again seeing him say one thing and doing the exact opposite. It reminds me of a question. I'm a pretty old geezer. I've been around here for a while. I…

So just stop for a minute. Let's do a what-if, because that's apparently what this treaty is trying to define, these what-ifs. So some country has maybe signed agreements that they're not going to develop biological weapons. They do that…

Okay. So let me just see if I get this right. You're a medical doctor. You went all through med school. You've been practicing a number of years. You enjoy what you're doing. Old people come to you that need medical attention. You don't…

Not only confusing, but in the telephone town hall I did, I sense an anger and a frustration in the public. First of all we are told that you don't have to read the bill, just vote on it because we haven't even put the bill together. You…

I call that the wheelchair tax. Now, I've thought of taxing a lot of stuff, but would you ever think of taxing a wheelchair? I mean, that's imaginative. It really is.

So in other words, what's going on is if you tell people with this system they can have anything they want, you're going to have a tremendous level of demand, which is what we see in the other countries after this gets going, and then you…

And you're already looking at, most people are looking in their district at a 10 percent unemployment rate. We're looking here at a bill that's going to cost trillions of dollars, 500 million jobs, a government takeover

I mean 5 million jobs. Excuse me. That would really be something. And a government, a major government takeover, and yet what do we have for the quality of results to expect in that we've seen it done in other countries and in the State of…

What we are talking about here this evening is the proposition that the Congress will take over, over a period of time, one-sixth of the U.S. economy. That is the health care section of the economy. Obviously, this big a change, a remake…

Well, there are just so many things in this bill to talk about, and that's why you have such old and young, male and female--the public just doesn't like this bill. And the reason is because there's stuff for everybody to hate in this…

So you've got Medicare, which is reimbursing doctors at 80 cents on the dollar, which means that somebody's got to make up the 20 cents. So we do a cost shift and shift that 20 cents into Medicare and dump that cost onto people who have…

So if you know nothing else about the bill, this is saying, Well, this is something to pay attention to. Now we haven't talked about some of the other nifty features. This is what gets me worried. This is what I don't like the most. And I…

So let's try and get up to 50,000 feet here and take a look at the sort of choices there are before Americans as to how we approach health care. It seems to me that in the beginning, you've got the sort of supply and demand situation. If…

You know what amazes me about that, gentleman, is I have heard various news outlets and various individuals, even people of political stripes saying that this bill is being held up by the Republicans. Now, somehow that just tickles my…

Let me just restate that. That is really an amazing premise, isn't it? This bill is going to insure 30 million more Americans and it's going to be budget neutral. Do you think people believe that?

I had a telephone town hall with my constituents last night, and I just asked them whether they thought it was a good idea for the government to be taking this over. And it was about 90 percent even said they just don't trust the…

So when the government doesn't have enough money to pay, they just say, well, we're not going to cover certain things because they're too expensive.

So the government makes a decision as to whether or not you are going to get care or not, which is rationing.

And so you have here in the U.K., these numbers here, this is women, but this isn't just breast cancer, but cancer in general for women, the survival rate at 52 percent or 53 percent, 66 in the U.S. So this difference is because of the…

So if you want to know why the telephones have been ringing off the hook, and there are a whole lot of people who don't like this bill, here is a whole block of people. Anybody who might get cancer, this is a pretty good reason not to like…

Boy, I really appreciate your putting that in perspective. Because we sort of rush through each day, each day is so busy, and we sometimes fail to just take a look and say, oh, my goodness, what is going on here? You know, first of all, a…

There is something that smells, doesn't it? This thing has been sitting around for about a half a year, and the more people find out about it, the more they hate it. A week or two ago, I just started making a list of all the people who…

I think that's part of the reason why you see this tremendous opposition to this legislation. And, you know, one of the things we did, trying to get some kind of perspective on some of these main points, imposes half a trillion in Medicare…

I think a lot of Americans feel that there are things that need to be fixed in health care, and a lot of our colleagues that are Republicans think there are things that need to be fixed in health care, but we don't think you melt the whole…