The Washington Stakeout

Dismissing the idea of a single payer health care system in his state, via the specter of an imagined inefficient government bureaucracy, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke of a health care system where all citizens were “insured.” His vision seemed to keep firmly in place a private layer of industry between citizens and health care services that one might think could be obsoleted or diminished by an state mandated system.

As he left for his car, The Washington Stakeout’s Sam Husseini asked the governor if he believed there was “such a thing as a business bureaucracy,” to which Schwarzenegger responded “oh yeah” — but there was no opportunity to further explore the governor’s thoughts, or see what he knew about the examples and lessons learned in Canada.

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Transcript

Sam Husseini: Mr. Hamilton, can you clarify one of your recommendations, number 63, which called on the US to “assist the Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise and to encourage investment in Iraq’s oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies. Are you calling for some sort of privitization?

Lee Hamilton: Oil of course is the critical asset in Iraq. It furnishes a very large percentage of the GDP of Iraq. It furnishes a huge percentage of the total revenues of the government. We recommend many things with regard to the oil industry. I think there are as many recommendations on oil as any other feature of it, and you have to look at them as a package. Okay, thank you.