Max Baucus: “I do not know how much time the Senator has, but I might ask, if the Senator does not mind, to address another subject…”

“I do not know how much time the Senator has, but I might ask, if the Senator does not mind, to address another subject with respect to jobs. Would the Senator agree, as we try to find a solution to this problem, that one of the issues we have to face and have to focus on is high health care costs that American companies pay and face? It is a very complex problem, clearly, but a lot of companies unfortunately are lowering their employee health benefits or their retiree health benefits because they say it is necessary in order to do business; the world is just so competitive. The first casualty is those who lose their health benefits. They are scared to death, frankly, about lowered health benefits or no health benefits. On top of that, it is partly, it seems to me, because we do have high health care costs in America. In fact, the last study I saw is that we pay twice as much per capita on health than does the next highest country. I do not know if we are twice as healthy as people in other countries, but we pay a lot, and that has to be the cost of doing business. What I am getting at, is part of the solution of this some way to address efficiencies in health care and quality of health care, recognizing that employees of companies in other countries have their health covered by the government, where that is not true in our country; that that, too, is a part of the problem here?…”