Li Xing: Let's talk about these agreements. Could you elaborate on the agreements and what you foresee these agreements will change things? Because you are talking about transformation.
Michael Leavitt: Yes. There are two agreements. The first deals with food and feed, and the second is on medical devices and drugs. I won't go into all the details, because they are long and complex, but essentially it commits both our countries to work on a collaborate basis to develop standards, so that products being developed in China for the US or the US for China meet our respective standards. It also calls for us to build capacity so that our respective systems can work together on an interoperable basis; they may be different systems but we have common goals. And we have to build bridges and this agreement helps us do that.
Li Xing:I have read through netizens questions and some of them are concerned, because they say China cannot really take all the blame. There are differences and there are gaps between standards set in America and set in China. And also because this is really an ongoing thing. I mean the United States is upgrading the standards and China may lag behind. So how do you bridge the differences?
Michael Leavitt:Well I think the most important thing is to realize that the reason much of this is happening is because things are changing. We need to upgrade and improve the system. And that's what these agreements are aimed at, finding ways to continually improve our relationship and our systems. It's also important to acknowledge that the systems in the United States aren't perfect. And that we're doing our best to learn how to improve our systems, while we work with China to understand how to best work with China. And I think another important thing is that there are countries all over the world struggling with this same thing because the world has changed. There's now much more global commerce, where in the past we've just been dealing with our own countries and a little bit outside. Now we deal a lot with other countries and the system has to migrate to change to accommodate it.
Li Xing: How do you value the health care for children?
Michael Leavitt:Well I not only have five children, I have three grandchildren.
Li Xing:Oh! Well, congratulations.
Michael Leavitt:Thank you. Of course we want children in the United States to have the care that they need. In fact, we're working right now to reauthorize part of our law called the Children's Health Insurance Program. It's a program that's designed to make sure that children who are in low-income situations have adequate insurance.
Li Xing: We read that in America, actually the people who are uninsured are from working-class families.
Michael Leavitt:Well that would be true I think not just in the United States but unfortunately around the world. One thing about the United States that's not often understood and that is that everyone gets health care. If a child is ill, or if a family member is sick and they don't have health insurance, they can go to a community health center and get very good assistance. And if they have a problem that can't be dealt with there, they're referred to a hospital. The cost of that is…
Li Xing:Is higher, right?
Michael Leavitt:Is generally higher, but it's borne by the government. The government pays for the health care costs of people who don't have insurance in many cases. So when we say they don't have insurance, that's true, but people in the United States who have health care needs receive it. We need to change our financing system so they have health insurance and they don't have to rely on the charitable system that's in place.
Li Xing: When you were governor of Utah, you actually worked very hard on improving the health care within the state, and I read it that you were able to cut medical expenses by 25 percent.
Michael Leavitt:We didn't reduce them by 25 percent. But we reduced them to the point they were about 25 percent below the national average. And I think that's a reflection of a couple of things. One we focused hard on prevention. But also we're a relatively young state. And young people are healthy. A third thing I would say is that there are many things in the state of Utah that encourages healthy living. There are fewer people, for example, who use alcohol or drugs and fewer people who use tobacco. All of those things are unhealthy behaviors. And they ultimately produce greater illness or some kind of chronic disease. So those aren't things I claim credit for as governor, but they were factors that helped accomplish what you reiterated.
Li Xing:I see. You also have this personal 500-day plan. And Chinese netizens are very interested in it. Could you elaborate on it?
Michael Leavitt:Yes. The department of Health and Human Services that I am responsible for is very large and complex part of our government. It includes the Food and Drug Administration, it includes all of our medical research, it includes all of our Medicare, which is health care for the elderly and disabled, it includes Medicaid which is healthcare for our citizens on low income, it manages many of the emergency preparations that we make for things like pandemics or other natural disasters. So it's a large and complex part of government. And I have found as a leader, that it's important to have a vision for what that…a government should and can accomplish and then have an agenda that leads towards that vision. So I laid out for the members of my department a vision of what we would like our department to look like 5,000 days from now.
Li Xing:5,000 days.
Michael Leavitt:5,000 days is about 12-and-a-half years.
Li Xing:Yeah.
Michael Leavitt:And then we put forward every 500 days an agenda that will lead us towards the 5,000 day plan. And the 500-day plan is often changed as circumstances change. Sometimes the priorities that we start with are different 500 days from now, but they are always leading towards the 5,000-day vision, which does not change often.
Li Xing:Oh well you are a really far-sighted man.
Michael Leavitt:In our government, it's not often that a person is able to be in a position of leadership for 12 and a half years, but it is important that we're making decisions that lead towards a vision that is long-term.
