Today we continue with our look at the debate between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his challenger, Sharron Angle. Yesterday's questions focused on immigration. Today we'll look at the candidates' responses to the health care debate.

1. Legal Daily News Feature
Reid v. Angle, Part 3
By Joshua Nave
Today we continue with our look at the debate between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his challenger, Sharron Angle.
Yesterday’s questions focused on immigration. Today we’ll look at the candidates’ responses to the health care debate.
10/21/10 care reform bill. He skipped the first step, and the moderator
called him on it.
According to the Medicare’s
actuary, the health care reform Okay Senator Reid, I’m gonna ask you that again - why didn’t
bill will actually increase costs you and President Obama focus on jobs and the foreclosure
including the addition of $100 million a year to Nevada’s crisis first, knowing how Nevada has suffered more than any
Medicaid budget. other state?
In light of the expensive mandates on small business and the Reid:
intense voter backlash, why didn’t you and President Obama
focus on jobs and the foreclosure crisis first, knowing how We did focus on foreclosure first, one of the first bills we
Nevada has suffered more than any other state? passed in this Congress was mortgage fraud. We moved into
that very quickly, to prevent these people who are taking
Reid: advantage of folks who are in trouble with their homes. And
that, we’ve had indictments here in Nevada and all around the
For a long time in this country, insurance companies have country as a result of doing that.
dominated the health care delivery system. You pay your
premiums, you get sick or hurt, they walk away from you. And remember what I said earlier. Health insurance reform
creates jobs. I was at MedCo today, they just, they’re bringing
We passed health insurance reform because we had no choice. on 500 new people, because we now have 2,000 pharmacists
I don’t know where you got the question, but the facts are there, as a result of what the health care reform bill did
all wrong. We, according to the Congressional Budget Office, they’re going to be bringing more people there.
independent, have been told that we will reduce the debt by
$1.3 trillion. We allow people who are, who have children with Although finally on point, this was one of Reid’s worst answers
preexisting conditions like diabetes, to no longer be denied of the night. Preventing foreclosure related fraud is important
insurance by those folks. but there are thousands of Nevadans losing their homes who
are not victims of fraud.
It is something that we had to do including extend the life
of Medicare for 12 years, fill the doughnut hole. The facts Angle:
that you gave Mitch are simply wrong. We had to do health
insurance reform to maintain competitive in the world Obamacare cut a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare right
economy, and it creates jobs, thousands and thousands of at the point where Social, senior citizens need to have that
jobs. Medicare advantage. That’s where their choices are. It also
cost us half a trillion dollars in new taxes.
Good answer, but wrong question. The moderator wanted to
know why health care reform was given greater priority than The solutions to the health care insurance cost problem are
the foreclosure crisis. Reid should have rejected the premise, simple, and they reside within the free market. We need to get
touted the steps taken by the government to address the the government out so we can go across state lines to choose
economic crisis, and then pivoted to his support of the health insurance companies. We need to get the government out of
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2. Legal Daily News Feature
the process so we can take off those mandated coverages. We things that they don’t need. What we want is a basic policy
need to get the government out so we can have tort reform where we can add the coverages that we need.
and so we can expand the pools.
I taught autistic children. I know that this is a real, biomedical
The solutions to the health care cost of insurance - are free disorder and it needs to have its own insurance code so that
market. families can get the right treatment and also be covered. But
the insurance mandate that we passed in this state only cares
Sharron Angle probably welcomed Reid’s failure to adequately for 25 percent of the one out of every 110 children that have
address the question - why didn’t Congress focus first on the autism.
foreclosure crisis - because it allowed her to skip it as well. As
a free market conservative, Angle has routinely supported less We need to stop making Band-Aid applications and look at real
regulation on the mortgage industry, less regulation on the solutions when we talk about health care, and really, forcing
banking industry, and less regulation of Wall Street. Like her someone to buy something that they don’t need is not the way
position on health care, Angle believes that the free market is to solve a problem.
doing what it is supposed to be doing to the housing market
and that the government shouldn’t intervene. This really gets to the heart of her thinking. In Angle’s
world view, unfettered capitalism is the best solution for
Reid: everything. I’m uncomfortable with any doctrine that treats
all situations the same, and this is no exception. In retail and
[soft chuckle] The facts are wrong. I read to the Medicare - I manufacturing industries, the profit motive leads companies
mean, the medical people today, here today, the fact that - a to make the best possible goods at the lowest possible costs
letter form Secretary Sebelius. Medicare Advantage people in to generate the highest possible profits. Everybody wins. But
the state of Nevada are going to pay less rather than more. that doesn’t mean that the same logic applies to the insurance
There will be more Medicare Advantage people on the rolls industry, where screening out people with preexisting
now, as a result of the health care being passed. conditions and denying claims leads to higher profit margins.
Industrialists and retailers profit by giving people what they
My opponent doesn’t like any insurance companies to have to want, insurance companies profit by paying out as little as
do anything. She’s against mammograms, colonoscopies, and possible.
as we’ve heard lately, insurance companies covering kids that
have autism. That’s really extreme. Okay let me rephrase that question again - is there anything,
at all, that you think the insurance companies should be
Reid plays the ‘’extreme’’ card, something he will continue mandated to cover. Anything?
to do throughout the debate. It’s also a distortion of Angle’s
position, as we’ll see soon. Angle isn’t opposed to insurance Angle:
companies covering those procedures; she’s opposed to
government regulations that would require them to do so. I think that what we have here is a choice between the free
market and Americanism. American is about choices. And we
Okay. Ah, we’ll go to the next question, it’s still on health care need to allow people to have those choices. The free market
reform, and actually, Senator Reid kind of paraphrased my will weed out those companies that don’t offer as many
question but I’ll rephrase it. choices and don’t have a cost-effective system. Let the people
decide where they want to buy their insurance - you don’t
You’ve said on various occasions, and in fact voted in the have to force them to buy anything and you don’t have to
state assembly, to do away with mandated coverage of force anyone to offer a product that no one wants.
mammograms and colon cancer tests. You’ve come out in
favor of eliminating coverage for autism and maternity leave. There are two problems with this answer, setting aside the
Is there anything you think the insurance companies should be obvious free market vs Americanism gaffe. The first is that
forced to cover? people do want mammograms and screening for colon cancer,
but insurance companies don’t want to pay for it. The second
Angle: problem is that health care isn’t like buying the optional
tow package on your new car - most health care costs are
America is a country of choices, not forcing people to buy unanticipated needs.
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3. Legal Daily News Feature
Okay, so no insurance mandates. Okay. Senator Reid? of our economy that is devoted to health care due to rising
costs. His pink shoe safari in the second paragraph fails to
Reid: connect the dots between a public desire for coverage of
mammograms and the unwillingness of unregulated insurance
Mitch, insurance companies. Insurance companies don’t do companies to provide them, despite the free market approach
things out of the goodness of their hearts, they do it out of a that has been used in the past.
profit motive and they have almost destroyed our economy.
Twenty percent of all costs, prior to our passing our health Thank you. Mrs. Angle, thirty seconds.
insurance reform, was because of health care costs. If we
didn’t do something to change it, it would go up by, in less Angle:
than 15 years, to 36 cents of every dollar. It would break us.
Well pink ribbons are not going to make people have a better
We need them to be forced to do mammograms. That’s why insurance plan. What makes people have better insurance
you see breast cancer awareness month, you see the baseball plans is competition. And that’s what I’ve been saying all
players wearing pink shoes and you see the football players along is that we need more competition so that they will cover
having pink helmets. It’s because people dread breast cancer the things that we need them to cover, because that’s the
and you don’t get breast cancer, you correct breast cancer, things that we want to buy. That’s how the free market works,
you detect it, if you do mammograms. that’s why our solutions reside in the free market and when
we talk about what has destroyed this economy, Obamacare
Colonoscopies - if you do colonoscopies, colon cancer does not is destroying our economy, I know a company that has laid off
come cause you snip off the things they find when they go up five people because of Obamacare.
and - no more. And we need to have the insurance companies
do this, it’ll save money in the long run to do this. Check back tomorrow for more of the Reid - Angle debate,
when we get into economic issues.
Vintage Harry Reid awkwardness. What Reid is attempting to
get at in the first paragraph is the rapidly growing percentage
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