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

Every American has a right to affordable, high-quality health care.

In a system where the cost of care is hidden by taxes levied on your income, property, and business activities, it is no wonder why so many Americans rely on Medicaid to pay their long term care.

In health care today, we spend most of the dollars - in terms of treating disease - in the last two years of a person's life.

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.

But if you - if what - the reports are true, what they're saying is, is that as a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that's going to increase our costs, we knew that.

Discussions of health care in the U.S. usually focus on insurance companies, but, whatever their problems, they're not the main driver of health-care inflation: providers are.

We've been paying for 100 percent of preventive care. But if you're not getting annual physicals, then you're not going to gain a financial incentive, so effectively your insurance premium with us will go up.

Medical care is one of the only sectors in which Americans are asked to make significant, long-term decisions without knowing the exact price of those decisions up front. Americans deserve to make informed decisions about their medical options.