Republican Presidential Candidates on U.S. Health Care Coverage (ContributorNetwork)

According to a recent Gallup poll, three out of four Americans believe U.S. health care coverage has major problems or is in crisis. When asked what the most urgent health problem facing the country is, most Americans name access and costs, far ahead of both cancer and obesity. Others, however, believe the greatest problems facing health care are actually government interference and the size of the government's health care budget.

For these reasons, the candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination were asked what about their views of U.S. health care coverage.

Here is what they said, according to the CNN-Tea Party debate transcript:

* Mitt Romney: "I'd reform Medicare and reform Medicaid and reform Social Security to get them on a sustainable basis, not for current retirees, but for those in their 20s and 30s and early 50s. But the key to balancing the budget -- and we talk about all the waste in government and the inefficiency. And having spent 25 years in business, I know something about taking waste out of enterprises. I'd love to do that to the federal government. And there is massive waste. But we're not going to balance the budget just by pretending that all we have to do is take out the waste. We're going to have to cut spending. And I'm in favor of cutting spending, capping federal spending as a percentage of GDP, at 20 percent or less, and having a balanced budget amendment. That's essential to rein in the scale of the federal government. ... The right answer for America is to stop the growth of the federal government and to start the growth of the private sector."

* Newt Gingrich: "Anybody who knows anything about the federal government knows that there's such an enormous volume of waste, that if you simply had a serious all-out effort to modernize the federal government, you would have hundreds of billions of dollars of savings falling off. ? The federal government is such a bad manager of money, that somewhere between $70 billion and $120 billion a year in Medicare and Medicaid is paid to crooks. We wrote a book several years ago called "Stop Paying the Crooks." I thought it was pretty obvious even for Washington. So I would start to balance the budget by stop paying the crooks, not by cheating honest Americans."

* Rick Santorum: "The idea that unless we have a government-run, one-size-fits-all Medicare program, that that's throwing grandma off a cliff, is Washington think -- is people who think in Washington this president, who believes that they know better than you how to run your life and how to purchase your health care. I trust you, I trust the American people. That is the greatness of our country."

* Ron Paul: "In a society that you accept welfarism and socialism, he (a young person with no health insurance) expects the government to take care of him. ? But what he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would be to have a major medical policy."

CNN debate moderator Wolf Blitzer then asked Paul a follow-up question: Should society just allow a person with no health insurance to die?

* Paul: "That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111206/pl_ac/10607141_republican_presidential_candidates_on_us_health_care_coverage

uppity uppity stuffing brandon mcinerney brandon mcinerney black friday 2011 deals nfl power rankings week 12