The Tolbert Report

Sen. Blanche Lincoln spent several minutes this afternoon in her Little Rock office to discuss the current health care reform proposals. She began by explaining her role on the Senate Finance Committee which is responsible for determining how to pay for the health care proposals.

“Many of us on the Senate Finance Committee are very fiscally responsible,” said Lincoln, “and come from rural states that know how important it is to be fiscally responsible so we have committed ourselves to making sure the bill we produce will be paid for.”

She went on to explain, “We have the greatest providers; we have the greatest doctors and nurses and hospitals and technology in the world. Our problem is we are not spending our dollars wisely because of inefficiencies in our delivery system. And so our objective is to create more efficiency in the delivery system in order to get a bigger bang for our buck.”

She went on to tell me that based on numbers from the Congressional Budget Office she believes that there may be an opportunity to save $700 billion by eliminating these inefficiencies. To do this, the health care system must be restructured to reward value and outcome for services rather than simply rewarding volume.

When asked if she planned to host any town hall meetings on healthcare, she said she felt this was not necessary as she had already hosted several meetings in April and in July. “We traditionally don’t have regular town hall meetings in August as in the past we have found that it is hard to get people to come to them,” said Lincoln. She admitted that might be different now with the increased interest in the health care proposals.

In sort of a lightening round of questions on the health care proposals specifics, Sen. Lincoln said she would not support a bill that provided for taxpayer funded abortion or health benefits for illegal immigrants. She said that she did not think the final legislation would have so called public option and would not mandate coverage, although she stopped just short of saying she would oppose this measures.

Sen. Lincoln also addressed the comments she made last week – and later apologized for - regarding the protesters at the health care forum saying they were “Un-American.”

“I am sorry I said that because I believe that every American has the right and should have the opportunity to voice their concerns and to speak out. Certainly that is a part of our free experience in this country. I probably misspoke when using that word. But I also have to believe and I know that most Arkansans were raised like I was. My parents raised me to be the best possible American I can be, the best possible Christian I can be, the best possible neighbor I can be – to be respectful. And I think that is what is important… It was a poor choice of words and I never intended for it to be meant that way, but I think it is important for us to put aside the differences and making sure we remember that our conversations be respectful – that we can disagree without being disagreeable.”

When asked if Nancy Pelosi should follow her example apologize for her comments as well she said, “I don’t know how she used it but possibly she should.”

Thank you to the Tolbert Report readers who submitted questions via email, twitter, and the comments section. Please watch both parts of the video and hopefully I covered these as well as a could in the time we had.

Tags: 2010 Candidates