Yesterday morning, the Kaiser Family Foundation held a newsmaker breakfast with Senate Max Baucus, and, well, he made some news. Here's the official transcript.Baucus: I think single pay – Merck is not ready for single pay. I mean, America, we are a bit different than people in other countries. We are not Europe. We are not Canada. We are America. It is “go west, young man.” It is entrepreneurism. It is creativity. It is innovation and so forth. And I think we have come up with a uniquely American solution which is a combination of public and private because we are America. I think that we would be spending capital inefficiently by trying to pursue a single pay system when we have another pathway to meet the health care reform available to us.As you can imagine, substituting the name of a pharmaceutical company for the name of the country isn't the sort of thing that gets you good headlines. Over at DailyKos, SteveB reads the transcript and writes, "Holy cow! Freudian slips don't get much more blatant then that! Montana's Senatator Max Baucus thinks he works for Merck, and only for America as an afterthought."I've gone back now and listened to the audio a half dozen times. I think the transcript is wrong. Baucus says "America" the first time. It's muddled, but there. The repetition is a clearer word, not a different word. But listen for yourself. The audio is here (as is the video and the transcript). The relevant quotes comes in at 36:35. Health wonks, though, will want to listen to the whole thing. Why? Because they're health wonks.
