and wrong. we will show you some interesting innovation going on back here in america in one of the poorest, most crime ridden cities in the nation. but, first, let's talk about the one thing americans are certain is bad. government-run health care across the atlantic in great britain. is the nation's health service an evil death panel as some say? let's take a look. >> reporter: during america's >> reporter: during america's debate over health care reform britain's said the system that rationed care to those in need. were they right? britain does have a system that

is as close to socialized medicine as any rich country gets. the government pays for everything, owns most of the hospitals, and pays most of the doctors. but consider this. compared to americans, the britts have longer life span and lower infant mortality rate and a health care system that consistently ranks higher on every measure. all this and everyone's care is covered. no payments to doctors and no monthly charges from your insurance company, no copays, no fees, nothing. at king's college hospital in london the doctor here performs a liver transplant surgery with a live donor. a young man is giving part of his liver to his younger brother. the liver is cut in half with one part for the younger brother and the other part staying in the donor. >> the liver is remarkable organ and made of eight segments so you can take pieces of the liver

and it will function perfectly well. >> reporter: this transplant costs tens of thousands of dollars but under britain's national health service or nhs, the patient doesn't pay a thing. >> when patients come to us, we only evaluate them from the point of view than need. do they need a liver transplant? the cost never comes into it. as a surgeon, i love that because it means the focus is on the care that i can deliver. >> nobody pays a doctor's bill on the nhs. people will go their entire life without paying a single up front cost. hello. >> reporter: dr. claire girardi is the chair of britain's college of general practitioners. >> are health services fair? it's irrespective of what you can afford and your illness. you will be able to access health care and that is what we require and that is what is a fair and honest health system.

>> reporter: compare that to the u.s. where an estimated 137,000 people died over seven years because they were uninsured. of course, the britts do pay for their health care in another way, with taxes. the sales tax is whopping 20% and income taxes as high as 50%. all of that money feeds a health care behemoth. the largest employer with more than 1 million people on the payroll of nhs so you would think it would be inefficient. >> that seems. it doesn't work in health care. >> reporter: this man turped the world's health care systems for his recent book "the healing of america." the least efficient payers in the world are the american private insurance companies have administrative costs of 20% to 30% and 30% tax on every dollar

you spend on health care. britain is totally socialized medicine, and administrative cost 5%. canada is private doctors and public payers 6% administrative costs. it turns out in health care, government are doing this more efficiently than our private sector. >> reporter: one reason said reid? private insurers in america spend more money on nonmedical costs like ads and reviewing claims to help them stay profitable. another way governments can be more efficient when they are footing the bill is by having a more coordinated approach to health care. for instance the nhs rewards primary care doctors with bonuses for achieving certain measures of good health like getting patients to quit smoking. that's money well spent because fewer sick people means lower health care costs for the country. on average, the british spend about $3,500 a person on health care.

in the united states, we spend around $8,500. what about the argument the only way to make the system work, the only way to get costs under control is to be -- you got to be a little cruel, you got to say we will pay for this and we won't pay for that. >> that's absolutely true. the british health minister said to me we cover everybody but we don't cover everything. >> reporter: not covering everything. the so-called rationing of care is the british system's most controversial element and one man in particular is at the center of that system. >> occasionally we do find ourselves up against everybody. the physicians, the patients, the media. sometimes a real challenge. >> reporter: so andrew dillon is the chief executive of the national institute for health and clinical excellence known as n.i.c.e. for short. it's the government body that decides which treatments the government will and will not pay

for. >> this is not about politics. it's not about money at the outset. it's about the evidence for what works best. the clinical studies and the other research done in this country and right across the world. >> reporter: the evidence is weighed by independent panels that include doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats. and decision making process is transparent. the public can weigh in. but the policies n.i.c.e. involve some of the most morals in medicine whether to fund a last line of defense cancer drug. >> in the end there is nothing else in life like facing death and we have to be sensitive to that. we try to be hard to be but equally we need to make sure that we are keeping our eyes on everything else that's we need the nhs to do for us. >> reporter: another controversial aspect of british health care? long wait times for certain procedures. in the early 1990s, you could

wait more than a year to be admitted to a hospital for a nonemergency. the nhs rule back now gives patients the right to be treated within 18 weeks of being referred. but that's still a long time to be standing in the cue. britain's government run system provides good care for all and is more cost effective than one might imagine. but the quality of its care can shift as funding waxes and wanes. so is there a way to provide care for all with less government? when we come back, we will visit a country that went from almost half its population being uninsured to nearly full coverage in less than a year and without breaking the bank. my cut hurt! mine hurt more! mine stopped hurting faster... [ female announcer ] neosporin® plus pain relief starts relieving pain faster and kills more types of infectious bacteria. neosporin® plus pain relief. for a two dollar coupon, visit neosporin.com. nature valley trail mix bars

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i tell mike what i can spend. i do my best to make that work. we're driving safely. and sue saved money on brakes. now that's personal pricing. what would happen if a country were given a blank slate to design its health care system? if it could choose from any nation in the world, which one would it imitate? taiwan had that unique opportunity and its story provides eye-opening lessons for the united states.

asia's tiger economies like taiwan and singapore and south korea skyrocketed out of poverty in the 1980s and '90s. taiwan was growing at 7% a year and joining the ranks of rich countries in no time. >> the country was getting richer, however, the health care insurance system was not all good at the time. >> reporter: a health policy expert at princeton says 41% of taiwan's population had no health care insurance in 1995. >> we paid out of pocket and for the really poor, then you pray a lot. >> reporter: so taiwan's government decided to reform its system of care from the ground up. william shower, a professor of economics at harvard, is one of the world's leading health care gurus. he proposed a bold approach to taiwan's health care reform.

>> we invited experts from all of the -- a whole range of countries so we can draw out the lessons and their experience for taiwan. >> reporter: the panel considered the u.s., its close geo political ally as a model for health care. they were not impressed. >> you can learn what not to do from the united states rather than learn what to do. >> reporter: they also looked at great britain. but the brits government-run system was producing long wait times in the '90s. >> bureaucracy is not the best and the most efficient way of running operations. >> reporter: then there was germany which had private insurance but they had so many different funds, their administrative costs were just too high, so taiwan with another insurance model where only one insurer in the market, the government. they combined that with private doctors and hospitals to avoid too much bureaucracy. the system looks like american medicare, only it's for everyone, not just the elderly.

taiwan's president, at the time, made a huge push to implement the plan quickly in 1995. dropped from 41% to 8% in less than a year. taiwan has a highly rated health care system. once more, it's a rock star when it comes to holding down costs. the taiwanese spend just 7% of their economy on health care. that's a paltry sum compared to our 17%. the government drives a hard bargain on fees with providers and taiwan can monitor its spending with this cool device -- the smart card. you swipe it any time you go to the doctor. they can pull up your recent medical history and when you're done, he'll have a record of that day's visit. then he'll send an estimate for your bill to the government right away, so officials know

how much has been spent at any given time. compare that to medicare in the united states which can only estimate its spending levels two years after the fact. >> in taiwan, all of that is recorded on a daily basis. >> reporter: wouldn't all of that government stinginess make it hard to see the doctor? surprisingly, that's not the case. americans go to the doctor four times a year on average. the taiwanese go around 14 times a year. >> and they stay in hospitals much longer than americans stay in hospitals. the average length of stay for a in a hospital is ten days. in the united states, we're five days. >> reporter: so how do the taiwanese provide all of that care for such low costs? one way, the doctors work their tails off. dr. gary lind's primary care

clinic is open 11 hours a day, six days a week. >> i take care of more than 200 patients a day. >> reporter: fees that government insurance doctors are very low. dr. lind only gets 14 dollars for each primary care visit. his colleague in the u.s. makes a hundred dollars per patient. taiwan's legislature just raised the insurance premiums people pay to get more money into the system but don't expect politicians to do something unpopular like that very often. >> in the 16-year-old history, taiwan has raised premium rates twice. just twice. >> reporter: no matter which health care system you visit, politics always comes into play. the next country we are going to visit has some remarkably similar politics to our own. it passed a version of obama care 18 years ago. has it worked out? or is it a disaster? find out when we come back. [ male announcer ] citi turns 200 this year.

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taiwan showed us that public insurance can work. it's not a popular campaign slogan for many americans right now so we search the world for a completely private model.

we found one in europe of all places. imagine an alternate universe where a version of obama care has been the law of the land for almost two decades. no, you haven't entered the twilight zone. you're in switzerland. >> tell the congress you want us to act and act now! >> right around the time president clinton was pushing health care reform in the 1990s, ruth dreyfus, a left wing swiss official was pushing reform in her own country and she faced a lot of tough questions. >> will we have to pay for the treatment of the addicts? will we have to pay for treatment of obese people? >> switzerland is extremely business friendly and it's

always gone its own way on the euro and charting its own course in health care with private providers and private insurance. that's actually not so rare according to journalist t.r. reid. one of the things that many americans believe about health care around the world is that other rich countries in the world all have socialized medicine. is that true? >> that is baloney. some governments provide the care and pay to it but a lot of rich democracies cover everybody. germany, switzerland, they don't have medicare. people stay with the insurer cradle to grave. >> the swiss was getting fed up with their private insurance in the early 1990s. costs rising and premiums were higher for women and the elderly and those with preexisting conditions had trouble getting coverage. some were foregoing insurance altogether. >> the people were flying out of the insurance so we had to stop this.

>> reporter: dreyfus, who would later become switzerland's first woman president, pushed for a law that required everyone to buy insurance, gave subsidies to the poor and stop rejecting people for their medical history. sound familiar? that's exactly what president obama's law would do but in switzerland, it was uphill battle. the law passed parliament and barely squeaked by the referendum with 52% of the vote. >> nobody was really happy but everybody could accept. >> reporter: how is the swiss version of president obama's law faring almost 20 years after it was put in place? >> i show you x-rays.. >> everyone is now covered and the care is still top-notch. the swiss enjoy one of the longest healthy life expectancies in the world. >> we have an extremely comfortable system. i mean, the access is easy. you don't have to wait. >> thomas was the swiss

secretary of health from 1991 to 2009. >> hospitals have become more like five-star hotels, offering health care. >> reporter: the swiss law went above and beyond obama care. insurance companies were already banned from making a profit on basic health care coverage. under the new law, they had to expand that basic package covering even more procedures. >> even very expensive pharmaceuticals are paid by the insurance plans and have to be paid. >> reporter: the swiss system is world renowned for the choice it provides its users. >> i chose the doctor i wanted to go to. i went there. and it was seamless. >> reporter: we caught up with joseline mills and her husband phillip thompson living in switzerland. johnson was expecting. >> i always waited three hours in an overcrowded waiting room,

you know, to see somebody, then to see a specialist if anything was wrong. so i don't have that here. >> reporter: another bonus, health insurance isn't linked to employment. plus you can change your insurer every year if you want. >> the choice is such that it is sometimes confusing. you know, you have in each town you're living a choice of probably a hundred to 200 different plans and you almost need a coach or someone helping you to choose your insurance plan. >> reporter: experts worry the swiss don't reap the cost savings from their insurance choices because there are so many of them. that might explain why health care costs in switzerland are still very high. 11% of gdp. >> you cannot make a perfect law, but you can make a perfectible law and i would say any law has negative side effect and this is, listen, you are

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there is no greater threat to the american dream than the rising cost of health care. it already takes up around one-fifth of our economy. by 2050 it could consume almost two-fifths and crowding out vital spending on education, infrastructure, science and technology not to mention the military and social security. how on earth did we get here and what can we do about it? >> a big part of the underpinnings of the system is all of us kidding ourselves. someone else is somehow magical paying for this. >> reporter: david is an unlikely agitator in the health care debate. he got involved after his father went to the hospital with pneumonia and died from an infection while he was there. >> i saw a hospital with less impressive information

technology than my dry cleaner has, than my auto mechanic has. a couple times my father was taken for procedures meant for other patients. there's trash on the floor. almost everywhere it overflows in patients rooms. you're endlessly dealing with personnel who don't know anything about your case. this is the intensive care unit we are talking about. >> reporter: the fate of his father is all too common. every year an estimated 100,000 americans die from an infection they got in the hospital. >> once i got beyond the personal illness of the tragedy i thought there is something very unusual about this just in the scope how the world works today and as i spent time thinking about health care, i began to think about the lack of real accountability to customers and the incentives to bad behavior that really dominate the way the industry is structured. >> reporter: unlike many markets, customers don't really pay their own bills in health care. instead, it's a private insurance company or the government that pays. in the case of goldhead's father, medicare picked up most of the tab which was over $600,000.

before hospital discount. >> to all of us that sounds terrific. i look at it at a different way. if medicare had said to my mother you pay the bill, and et hospital come to my mother and said, here's what we are charging you for killing your husband, the collection would have been zero. there's no way my mother would have paid that bill. no way any of us would pay that bill. >> reporter: he summed up his world view in an article in "the atlantic". how american health care killed my father. he said if more patient spent their own money in the health care prices in the industry would come down. your basic argument is that the whole idea of using insurance to pay for health care is wrong. >> the problem with insurance is that it's very costly. it's a very costly way to finance anything which is why it's neve used to finance anything outside of health care that isn't major and rare in unpredictable. i think if you look at the health care system, what you see is a system that lacks any of the normal disciplines we see in

everything else. >> so give me an example of someplace where you find market forces can actually work the way you're describing it. >> well, you know, around the fringes of health care, we have things that look like health care that aren't in the health care economy. they are not insured. we have seen it in certain times of cosmetic dental surgery and cosmetic surgery generally. we see it in medicine for pets. what we see in all of those markets is markets. >> reporter: take lasik eye surgery for example. since the procedure was introduced prices have dropped considerably despite the expensive equipment and well trained specialists. lasik doctors actually compete for your business with ads that tell you about their safety record and prices. >> ask a very simple question of your viewers. how many of them know the safest hospital in their neighborhood? why not? why is there nobody with a billboard saying, don't go to downtown, go to up down, downtown will kill you.

we have been through 45 years of turning over our power to insurers, to medicare and medicaid. look at the result. >> reporter: goldhill's solution? insurance should only cover catastrophic events and serious illness, while routine care like doctors' appointments should be paid for from a health savings account that each person controls. the poor would get government subsidies for their accounts. >> we have to care about the costs because what we are doing in medicine is destroying the american dream. >> reporter: dr. atool gandhi is a surgeon, a staff writer for the new yorker, and the author of several best selling books on medicine. he agrees with goldhill that the market in health care isn't working, but he says there's an important fact to consider. >> the sick account for most of the costs, 5% of patients or 50% of the costs. and these are folks for whom the bills are 40,000 and 50,000. >> reporter: under gold hill's solution limiting insurance to catastrophic events and serious illnesses, insurance companies

would still be paying for a lot of our health care costs. figuring out how to treat the sickest of the sick says is the trillion dollar question. >> the average patient who is elderly and on medicare has more than ten specialist physicians by their last year of their life. and if you've ever taken care of an elderly parent, you know how much you want to tear your hair out that they just won't talk to each other. >> reporter: what the country needs, he says is a more coordinated approach to care. some doctors tend to prescribe too much medicine, he says. that's less efficient, but it is more profitable. >> we have focused on getting the best drugs, the best devices, the best specialists. we think very little how we fit it together so it works well. >> what is wrong with prescribing lots of procedures? i mean, i think americans think of this as a case where surely more is better. why not have mris? >> more at the right time is better with you we are doing 70

million ct scan and doing more of these they end up raising and maybe a spot there and maybe not that leads to more surgery and more risk. >> reporter: a more coordinated approach to care may reduce needless testing and lower costs. >> we are done! >> yea! >> reporter: president obama's health care law encourages more ways to come up with effective ways to provide care. >> the concentration on the 5% of patients who are the highest cost patients and how badly we take care of them is unleashing enormous innovations and enormous reductions in costs. i think we are about to enter a period of very rapid change. >> when we come back, we will show you a bold example of that change. a health care experiment being conducted in one of the roughest

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mine was earned off vietnam in 1968. over the south pacific in 1943. i got mine in iraq, 2003. usaa auto insurance is often handed down from generation to generation. because it offers a superior level of protection, and because usaa's commitment to serve the military, veterans and their families is without equal. begin your legacy, get an auto insurance quote. usaa. we know what it means to serve. i'm don lemon. here are your headlines. a deadly disease outbreak with no name and only children as victims. some kind of ill that doctors have never seen before and so far can't treat it and can't stop it. at least 61 children dead and all of them in cambodian. medical officials are worried about it spreading to other

countries. massachusetts congressman barney frank married his long time partner jim ready tonight in a ceremony officiated by the state's governor deval patrick. massachusetts is one of the few states that allow same-sex marriage. and, yes, sir, it is that time of year again pamplona, spain, tradition of running bulls through the street. the first day of the eight-day festival. the animals wind up in the bull fighting ring after running the streets. i'm don lemon. keeping you informed. the most trusted name in news. >> skyrocketing health care

costs have created what some say is one of the biggest economic bubbles in american history. doing nothing could lead to dire consequences. that's why some providers are experimenting with innovaive approaches to health care before it's too late. >> we are spending a whole lot in our country for health care and we're not getting our money's worth and that is a tragedy. >> doctor jeffrey brenner is on the front lines trying to reform a health care system that has been called hopelessly broken. >> we spend twice as much as other industrialized countries and we cover fewer people in our country. >> reporter: brenner is tackling this disconnect in camden, new jersey. one of the america's poorest cities. he has been a family physician here for 11 years. his mission started on this street in 2001 with a gunshot. an unremarkable sound in camden which has one of the highest murder rates in the country. >> i was sitting at my desk one

evening and shots rang out. >> brenner ran outside where the victim was lying in a pool of his own blood. no one was doing anything. >> i started yelling at one of the sergeants, you know, why didn't you do anything? and he said, well, we didn't want to dislodge the bullet which was a complete blow-off. and just showed such lack of compassion and lack of concern for sort of the dignity of people's lives. >> reporter: the victim was a remarkable product of camden. a senior at rutgers university who had talked about running for mayor one day. his death triggered a passion in brenner to reform the camden police department, but he says it was mired in dysfunction. >> i threw my hands up and said i give up on helping to reform the police department in camden, but i think i can take a lot of the ideas that i learned in the process and bring them to health care. >> reporter: brenner had been mapping crime data to locate the city's most violent corners. just like the new york city

police department did in the '90s, producing great success. so he started mapping health care spending, identifying hot spots where the costs were the highest, using medical billing records, brenner found that just 1% of the patients accounted for 30% of health care costs in camden and that is not all he discovered about the city's three hospitals. >> we learned that someone went 113 times in one year. someone went 324 times in five years. in similar work up in trenton they found someone who went 450 times in one year. >> reporter: these were people with complicated medical histories and chronic illnesses. one patient alone racked up $3.5 million in medical bills over five-year period. >> therapy the difficult patients to treat and no one is paying attention to them. >> once more, camden's problem is america's problem.

just 5% of americans accounted for half of our nation's health care costs in 2009. this is perhaps the crucial statistic to understand about america's health care problem. if brenner could crack his city's cost crisis, maybe his model could help the country. >> we have met with his primary care doc. >> reporter: he founded the group of nurses and social workers and volunteers who treat the city's worst of the worst. one patient at a time. >> and i'm going to visit with her today. >> reporter: every day the group gets data from the emergency rooms and the first time this has happened anywhere in america. jason, a former teacher and registered nurse, is making a house call to 52-year-old lillian perez. she was admitted to the hospital

eight times last year, mostly for respiratory distress. she literally has a bucket full of medications for chronic lung disease and other conditions. jason and his colleagues got a ventilator placed in lillian's home. >> it's a new ventilator. >> i got what i need. >> she saw her pulmonologist who only seen her in the hospital every couple of months. they said we haven't seen you in a while. you look great. >> reporter: lillian was stayed out of the e.r. 70 days and counting and a record for her in recent years. but the city's sickest are often hard to reach. some don't have phones. so jason and his team do routine drivebys to see patients like earl. >> hey, earl. jason from the coalition. how are you doing? >> all right. >> reporter: earl is one of the biggest e.r. users in camden, along with a host of social

issues, earl suffers from epilepsy, hypertension and congestive heart failure. >> trying to make it through another day, do you know what i'm saying? i seen the three amigos. they came earlier. >> reporter: the three amigos is the term earl uses to describe the team that visited him earlier in the day. >> yeah, i know you're busy. >> reporter: despite the long odds, earl's hospitalizations have decreased by 30%. brenner found that many expensive patients like earl were concentrated in certain areas of the city. one building alone, a subsidized apartment tower accounted for $12 million in hospital costs over five years. >> in the patients that were polled that made that much money and still felt so sick and they still felt like it was so hard for them to access services. >> reporter: so brenner set up a clinic right in the building so that the residents can get preventive care. >> this is not a story of bad patients, bad doctors, bad hospitals and evil insurance

companies. it's the story of a broken system that has irrational incentives and misaligned incentives so the patients aren't getting their needs met. >> reporter: brenner says that early evidence suggests his experiment is working. hospital use is down for participating patients. his model is being replicated in trenton and newark, two other new jersey hot spots. these programs are bolstered by new legislation that rewards caretakers for preventing and controlling illnesses instead of just treating them. it was signed last august by governor chris christie with bipartisan support. >> rather than a cycle of failure in health care it creates a cycle where we are rewarded for doing the right thing. >> reporter: here is the problem. brenner's coordinated approach to reducing costs is essentially taking away patients and business from hospitals and doctors. that threatens the profits of most of the established players in health care.

when we speak of reducing health care costs, remember that for many powerful interests, that translates into taking away my business. but if brenner does succeed in bending the cost curve here. >> it would make the rest of the country look silly if the city of camden is able to improve quality and reduce costs and it really shows that this is not a technical problem but a political and spiritual and moral problem. >> when we come back, i'll give you my thoughts on the health care debate. stay with us. [ man ] ever year, sophia and i use the points we earn with our citi thankyou card for a relaxing vacation. ♪ sometimes, we go for a ride in the park. maybe do a little sightseeing. or, get some fresh air. but this summer, we used our thank youpoints to just hang out with a few friends in london. [ male announcer ] the citi thankyou visa card. redeem the points you've earned to travel with no restrictions.

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house bill 2309 is not the answer.

after taking this tour of the globe and america, what is the best way to reform american health care? i'm reminded of the old irish joke. a couple of is lost in the irish countryside and stops to ask a local the best way to get to dublin. well, i wouldn't start from here, he replies. america's health care system is really a mess.

it is partly free enterprise and partly state subsidized and highly inefficient in delivering quality health care at a reasonable price. let me outline a few general principles. i'm a big fan of the free market. i think it has an almost magical ability to allocate resources and generate growth. but precisely because it is so powerful, in places where it doesn't work well, it can cause huge distortions. the nobel prize winning economist outlined in the 1960s why markets don't work very well when it comes to health care. he explained that people don't know when they will need health care and that when they do need it, the cost is observe prohibitive. that means you need some kind of insurance or a government-run system. now, if we decided as a society that it is okay that when people

suddenly discover they need health care they can get it only if they can pay for it, that would work. but it would mean that the vast majority of americans wouldn't be able to pay for that triple bypass or hip replacement when they need it. the market would work just as it works for bmw cars. people who can afford it, can get it. people who can't, don't. but every rich country in the world and many not so rich ones have decided that all citizens should have access to basic health care. and given that, a pure free market model simply can't work. and, remember, even if one were to have only a catastrophic insurance model, that's where all of the costs are. just 5% of the patients in the united states account for 50% of health care costs. and taking care of these catastrophic illnesses is what drives america's costs up. now, a general insurance system

can only work with everyone is insured. that's what the swiss and taiwanese found out. otherwise only the people who are sick will want to buy insurance and insurance companies will spend most of their time and effort trying to kick sick people off the system or deny coverage to those who might get sick. that's why the heritage foundation, a conservative think tank, came up with the idea of the individual mandate requiring that people buy health care insurance in the way the same way people are required to buy car insurance and why mitt romney chose this model as a market friendly system for massachusetts when he was governor and that is why newt gingrich praises the massachusetts model as the most important step forward in health care in years. the obama health care bill now upheld by the supreme court expands access to 30 million americans. that's good economics. and it's also the right thing to do. but it does little in the way of controlling costs.

there are several experiments and pilot programs in it. there are new trends emerging such as the one we saw in camden, but little in the way of systemic cost controls. that's largely a failure of nerve in the entire political establishment. every expert realizes that no matter what the system of health, you need to have some kind of board that decides what is covered and what's not. now, this has been demogoged as death panels when it is really the only sensible way to make the system work. no one is saying that you can't get any medical procedure you want. merely that there are some that your insurance won't pay for. the other unusual aspect of points out is that buyers don't really have much knowledge or power. you you can decide you don't want a new car and you can comparison shop for a new tv but

you can't really decide you don't want a heart bypass and that is why costs have come down in optional areas like lasik surgery, but not in ones where the consumer really can't walk away. a final thought. one can reason from first principles and that is a good thing. but you must also reason from facts on the ground. and the facts are that all rich countries try to provide affordable health care for their citizens in some way or the other. all of them, including free market havens like taiwan, have found they need to use an insurance or government-sponsored model. and all of them provide universal health care at much, much lower costs than we do. maybe there is a theoretical free market model out there that would work perfectly, but right now in the world we are actually living in, some kind of mixed messy health care system is what

we have and our task is not really to accomplish it in favor of a utopia that might come but to improve it so that americans can get good care at reasonable prices like so much of the rest of the world. thanks for tuning in to this gps special. you can read more of my thoughts in "time" magazine and you can always catch my regular show on sundays at 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. eastern. international viewers can go to our website for air times. cnn.com/fareed. tonight, a man who changed television forever. >> this new service will be called a cable news network. >> ted turner has never been shy about speaking his mind. tonight, he tells all. >> the moneyed interests are taking over the country.

>> mouth of the south. >> i lost my fortune, most of it. i have a billion or two left: you can get by on that if you economize. >> and a man whose ex-wife says this about it. i'm so proud of him. he's done so much good work in the world. >> george w. bush. >> i want to stay connected to the veteran community. i'm not going to be a public person. this is a rare interview for me. >> this is "piers morgan tonight." >> good evening the first ted turner, a tv pioneer. but, also, a very out spoken man and a rare interview for president george w. bush. if anyone knows about keeping america great is a former american president. >> after 9/11, mon