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Here's where the insurance companies really fail us. They over-pay hospitals, specialists and drug companies and then raise premiums to cover the costs. Further, when they pay hospitals 115% of what it should cost to care for a patient, they are paying for inefficiency that can be dangerous.

We do not have a functioning market in the true sense of the word in health care. That's a layer of transparency that's sorely needed in America.

We can have the best health insurance options in the world, and people still won't get needed care if we don't increase our supply of primary care physicians and nurses.

Our system of private health insurance that fails to provide coverage to so many of our citizens also contributes to the double-digit health care inflation that is making America less competitive in the global economy.

We really do have to get at the underlying question of health-care costs.

Health care in America, despite all you hear, still offers us citizens one of the most efficient and highest quality systems in the world. But it's expensive, and it's only getting worse.

When I came to Congress, like our first panel, small business people, 64 percent of the people had health insurance. We'd buy it. Now, we're down to about 34 percent. That's why we have to do something on health care in this country because the cost is killing us.

I think we can see how blessed we are in America to have access to the kind of health care we do if we are insured, and even if uninsured, how there is a safety net. Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care ... it is another story altogether.

Health care costs are an issue both for the government and for our larger economy.

What we're really trying to do is level out the health care system. It has gotten so one-sided as more and more people have been put into managed care; in fact, about 70 percent of the patients in the country.