The former Governor of Wisconsin and former Secretary of Health and Human Services outlines his action plan for America’s future.

Thompson: I’m Tommy Thompson, former Secretary of Health in the Bush administration and I’m also a former Governor of the Great State of WisconsinrnrnQuestion: How is the financial crisis affecting health care and what can we do to save the system?rnrnThompson: If you look back over the last several years, there are a lot of indicators that if people would have paid attention and really acted upon them, we probably would not be in the situation we are today. The fact that, you know, the excess credit, people buying houses without proper foundations and proper credit, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, you know, there were a lot of signs there that they were not doing well. And all of this pointed out that something should be done. The same thing is happening now in the healthcare field. When you look at the cost of healthcare $2.4 trillion of which 16% of that is from the Gross National Product, more than what any other country is spending for healthcare. You can see that Wisconsin or Untied States is in a non-competitive type of situation, and we have to do something about it. The second thing is Medicare, the system that takes care of sort of the ability to close all the holes and be the place to save individuals that ever got serious problems and elderly and disabled, the safety net, Medicare is, that’s going broke by the year 2012. I mean, it’s going broke, whether we like it or not. And then you’ll look at chronic illnesses and that takes up 75% of the cost of healthcare system, and if you want to fix it, you have to go where the money is. As Willie Sutton was asked why do you rob banks, his answer was that’s where the money is. So, if you want to fix the healthcare system, we got to know where the money is and that’s where where it is, it’s in chronic illnesses and chronic things. And in order to fix it, there are things that you have to do such as we have to go to a wellness type of system. We’re in a disease system right now. We wait ‘till people get sick. And then we spend thousands of dollars to get you well. It doesn’t make much sense to me. Why don’t we, why don’t we be smart in America and take care of people upfront, before they get sick, keep them well, you know. Once you pay for insurance and we keep you well, you know, instead of paying for insurance, they get sick before you can collect. It just doesn’t make much sense to me. And the second thing is we got to make sure that people that do have chronic illnesses of which 133 million Americans do have one or more chronic illnesses, we have to be able to have a program so that they’re able to see their doctor on a regular basis. Most individuals, Glaxo-Smith Kline just had a survey of 75,000 people and they found out that 70% of people with diabetes thought they were in good shape physically and thought they were controlling their diabetes, and when they looked at it, they found that their blood sugar count was very high and that they were actually deteriorating. People with asthma, 1/3 of individuals with asthma were not taking care of themselves and the same survey by Glaxo-Smith Kline pointed that out. And so, why don’t we do something about that? Why don’t we manage those individuals with chronic illnesses and try to get them well, because if you improve their quality of health, you improve their quality of life, very simple. And the third thing is we’ve got to make sure that the market place is available and accessible for new tools, new medicines, new therapies, new opportunities, you know, to cure chronic illnesses and that’s education, it’s research, and its development. All of these things are important for the new healthcare system.rnrnQuestion: Do you support universal health care?rnrnThompson: I do support universal healthcare, but I do not support a government controlled system. There a difference and most people get confused about that. A universal healthcare system which I think is doable and I think it should be I think it’s basic for America and that is about making sure that healthcare is affordable and accessible to every American, and you have to go through what I’ve already talked to you about in order to get there. And one pair of system is having a Medicare system like we have running all of healthcare out of Washington DC making the decisions at cost and reimbursement and what the procedures you or your family are going to have, what sort of doctors you should see or not, more like the Canadian system. I don’t want to go to that system. I think it’s very inefficient and I don’t think you would allow for that kind of innovation, the development that I think our healthcare systems needs. One of the most important things is for us to allow pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies to innovate and to be able to come in with new drugs, new therapies, new ways of operating [on you] or making sure that you’re healthier. These are great things that we have to do that. I’m afraid the government controlled system would really not kill, but it would certainly help strangle, slow down the development of new drugs and new therapies.