Thom Hartmann: With me is Carrie Lukas, the Vice President of the Independent Women's Forum and Vice President of Policy and Economics at the Independent Women’s Forum. And Carrie welcome back to our show.

Carrie Lukas: Hey, thank you so much for having me on.

Thom Hartmann: It’s always nice talking with you, Carrie. The, Ben Stein, I guess [Ben Smith] over at America’s Blog, I set the papers aside, I need to grab them back, quoted an insurance insider, an insurance industry insider email that was leaked by a whistle blower this morning saying, talking about what the Democrats are doing in the Senate right now, it says, “We WIN!” there’s going to be, a program is going to be administered by the corporations so we continue to get to skim our money off the top, there’s gonna be no government-paid-for option, so we get to, all the money, you know, if there is a public option, people are gonna be forced to buy it from us. You know, "We win, we’ve won". What do you think?

Carrie Lukas: Well, you know, I think Thom, this is gonna be an area where you and I agree. I think that absolutely what’s going on right now in the Senate is bad for the American people and in some ways it’s gonna be a giveaway to corporations and to special interests in the medical profession. I think that the real thing, when it comes down to it, over 2000 page bill, especially one where you’ve got senator Reid out there trying to convince so many people to vote for this, a lot of whom are getting pressure from their constituents not to vote for it, they’re doing a lot of things to try to seal the deal that we would consider basically a little bit dirty, whether it’s giving a specific earmark to members and really just a lot of politicking going on which is bad news for the American people, whether it’s giveaways to industry or …

Thom Hartmann: Yeah. Let me speak on behalf of the legislation, very, very reluctantly. Because I know, Carrie, that you know that I don’t support this concept. I’m in favor of single payer healthcare. I would like to see everybody in America be covered by Medicare, period. Just like it is in Austria for example. And you know I think that that’s a better system, it’s worked in every other country around the world where, it works very, very well in those countries and those countries have better outcomes. That said, we have a rogue industry in this country. I mean when Stephen Hemsley, the CEO of United Healthcare, can make 700 million dollars in compensations over a 5 year period, there’s something seriously wrong particularly when you consider that every single one of those dollars, or the vast majority of them, were made by saying to people like you or me who might be insured by that company, that no, sorry, we’re not gonna pay for the - fill in the blank - that you need.

Carrie Lukas: Well, you know, I think that I’m not gonna, I’m certainly not going to defend the current system as being perfect, but I think that it’s important for people to understand, certainly the insurance industry is going to be seeking the best outcome and they are pushing real hard. The government has a …

Thom Hartmann: They’re seeking the best outcome for themselves. My point is…

Carrie Lukas: Absolutely.

Thom Hartmann: My point is we do need to reign them in. And at the very, frankly we’re the only country in the world that allows for-profit insurance companies to exist in providing primary health insurance. Why should we be that stupid as Americans?

Carrie Lukas: I think that we absolutely should think about why it is that we need to quote “rein the insurance companies in” and who best is going to do that because what I would say is we do, we have a real problem right now because we don’t have a functioning marketplace. The best way for us to really force companies to compete is to make them actually compete and to serve the customer. Right now because of a lot of jargon …

Thom Hartmann: In other words you want big government to come in and force them to compete?

Carrie Lukas: No, no I want to get some of the regulations out of the way. You know a simple place to start is to, right now we cannot buy health insurance across state lines.

Thom Hartmann: You know the reason why?

Carrie Lukas: There’s a lot of states, so it’s absurd…

Thom Hartmann: You know the reason why, Carrie?

Carrie Lukas: My opinion is it is so that the little state insurance people can make their own fiefdoms and set their own regulations.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, well, it is so that they can set their own regulations, but you know when Louise and I moved to Vermont, my car insurance company dropped my car insurance. And I thought gee, that’s weird. My brother-in-law moved to Vermont, he had the same company, they dropped his, one of the big national companies. I called the insurance commissioner and said, what's the deal and they said you know here in Vermont with regard to car insurance we’ve got some of the strongest consumer protection rules in the nation. Car insurance companies can’t rip people off in the state of Vermont. And so therefore there is a smaller number of companies.

Still enough companies that will compete and the prices aren’t that much different but there’s a number of these very large companies that regularly engage in deceptive practices, deceptive advertising and ripping off of clients that just don’t like operating in this state, because, you know, they can’t do what they like to do. And if the only protection against a big corporation or sociopaths who had these health insurance so-called companies and take hundreds of millions of dollars for denying coverage to the people that are giving them money. If our only protection is we the people, I believe in we the people and not them the multi millionaire CEOs. And I don’t get it why you’re on the side of the multi millionaire CEOs instead of being on the side of we the people, Carrie Lukas.

Carrie Lukas: See, I really don’t think I’m on the side of the multi millionaire CEOs. You’ve just described, and you’re outraged right now, at what’s going on…

Thom Hartmann: Those are the choices.

Carrie Lukas: You’re outraged at what’s going on with the senate and with government saying, 'hey, we’re gonna give you something back, you guys are good campaign contributors, we’re gonna make it worth your while'. Well, Thom…

Thom Hartmann: Yes, I think that’s wrong.

Carrie Lukas: That’s what’s happened when you give government all this power. And, yes, the free market isn’t perfect…

Thom Hartmann: No that’s what happens when you allow corporations to corrupt government.

Carrie Lukas: Okay, well Thom, you know, there’s really. What’s your solution, then?

Thom Hartmann: My solution is that we roll back, all the way back to 1886. This wasn’t a problem in this country prior to reconstruction. That we go back to saying that it is illegal for a corporation to participate in politics or to give money to politicians. Individuals can, because we are a nation of citizens, corporations cannot, corporations are artificial entities that are created by law. They are created by government. They are the creations of we the people. We allow a corporation to exist. So.

Carrie Lukas: OK, well you know, I think that now we’re getting into campaign finance issues, which is interesting…

Thom Hartmann: No, I’m talking about corporate personhood. I’m talking about the Citizen’s United vs. FEC case that’s coming down from the Supreme Court.

Carrie Lukas: Okay but then we’re gonna say, actually I think then it becomes an, a free speech issue. Well what about unions, should they be allowed to participate to the extent that they do?

Thom Hartmann: No.

Carrie Lukas: Okay. So I think that that again scares me. Because all of a sudden, you’re giving so much power to the government when you decide that…

Thom Hartmann: No, you’re not. You’re giving the power to the people. If a union, and this is why it works, actually to the advantage of the unions. Because Taft Hartley took that power away from the unions in 1947 and in 1907 Teddy Roosevelt took the ability to give direct contributions from corporations to politicians away from corporations. And in both cases I think that the theory was right and if a corporation wants to say to their employees, hey why don’t you call your congressman and lobby for this, we think it’s a good thing for our company, let them do that and hope that their employees call. Same thing with a union. Fact of the matter is with a union I think you’re gonna get a whole lot more compliance because generally people realize that the union is there to serve their interests as opposed to serve the stockholders interest which may be a very different interest. But we’re wandering off the topic here, Carrie.

What do you think about this, I propose Medicare Part E. Everybody should be able to buy into Medicare and I said I think this is a good thing. Medicare as you know in the first place, the health insurance companies were kind of enthusiastic about it back in the ‘60s when Lyndon Johnson pushed it through because it was off loading all the expensive patients to the government. The elderly and expensive people. And now there’s talk about dropping the Medicare eligibility age to 55 or 60 which will put even, which will further that process. Typically after 55 is when people start getting expensive. And so the health insurance companies look like they’re gonna support this. What are your thoughts on this? We have a minute by the way.

Carrie Lukas: Well, you know, I think that one of the things we need to step back from is realize how, what’s going on with our Medicare program because right now we have a Medicare program that is spiraling towards bankruptcy. The, we’re about, it’s set to start running deficits in about five years or so and we’re gonna face a huge debt. So instead of just growing another government program and giving the government more power…

Thom Hartmann: This wouldn’t be a government program, this would be people buying into it, this would be, people would buy into Medicare and they would pay exactly what it costs.

Carrie Lukas: Well, you see, but Thom, that gets hard. Because when it starts paying exactly what it costs it gets really expensive. So I think we just need to be a little bit skeptical of government being able to solve this problem for everyone. And government creates as many problems as it solves.

Thom Hartmann: All right, we’ll leave it at that. Carrie Lukas. IWF.org, the Independent Women’s Forum. Carrie, thank you for dropping by.

Carrie Lukas: Great, thanks so much for having me on, Thom.

Thom Hartmann: Always good speaking with you.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.