Word: points
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Right. But that decision, however, will, you're saying, be still there for the family to make, will be - It's still going to be a decision that the family has to make. I guess - this is my point, I think that there's this perception that you either have rationing that is very stringent and sort of makes you wait for months before you can get your cancer treated or you can never get your knee replaced, right, all the horror stories you hear from the British model or the Canadian system that people who are opposed to reform...
...those systems, there's still going to be hard choices, right? But the fact of the matter is, ultimately, my grandmother was able to get that hip replacement even though she had terminal cancer and even though the operation was full of risks. And so from a purely economic point of view, there would be some who argued that wasn't a good use of health care dollars. I guess my point is that...
...believe that was? I guess my point is, is that you don't even get to those really tough decisions, you don't even have to get to those really tough decisions before you've already saved a huge amount of money and made people healthier and made sure that Medicare was solvent and bent the cost curve. I mean, there's 20, 25% of the cost - of the system that is wasteful right now, even before you get to tough decisions about end-of-life care...
...some of that may have to do with reimbursement models. There may be differences that have to do with the approach that hospitals here take in recovering costs for expensive equipment. There are a whole range of reasons why that might be true, but the point is, is that it's not like people out there are - would automatically be prevented from getting CAT scans if we just tried to think when is a CAT scan or an MRI working and appropriate in improving care and when...
...think other than that we've been pretty consistent about how I think we need to approach the problem. And by the way, I in no way want to suggest that cost is more important than coverage. My point has been that those two things go hand in hand. If we can't control costs, then we simply can't afford to expand coverage the way we need to. In turn, if we can expand coverage, that actually gives us some leverage with insurers or pharmaceutical industry or others to do more to help make the health care system more...