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Dr. Ben Carson with John Hawkins of Right Wing News/caption
Last week I was pleased to get an opportunity to interview Dr. Ben Carson in Myrtle Beach SC. What follows is a slightly edited transcript of our conversation.
Now I wasnt going to get into this but before we got started I was listening to you talk about your surgeries. A lot of people know youre a surgeon and they know youre supposed to be good but they dont know how good you are. I think you did the first separation of Siamese twins too right?
Joined at the back of the head yeah.
Give us a breakdown of some of your accomplishments.
Well actually Ive done several separations. I did the first intrauterine shunt on a hydrocephalic friend. I pioneered the (a surgery) for dwarfs. Seventy percent of them used to die. There was a lot of controversy around that because many of the traditional people thought that the surgery was worse than the disease but we actually figured out a way to do it that was extremely safe and it is used around the world now. We pioneered several cranial facial techniques (for people) with congenital defects. So there were a lot of things that were going on including operating on brain stem tumors which people said were inoperable….. so we sort of moved the dial in all of those areas.
Okay now the biggest knock I hear on your candidacy is that you may be a brilliant guy but you dont have a lot of experience in politics. So in a crowded field I think a lot of people may be saying Well I like Ben Carson a lot but why should I take a gamble on a novice when there are some blue chip conservative candidates with experience in the race?" What do you say to the people who make that argument?
I would say lets attend to the salesman who comes in and says Im the only one who can sell you a product that works. Nobody else has anything that can work." And you know weve already been using his products and they havent worked. So why should we now say that thats what works.
What I would much rather think about is someone who has a track record of solving problems and someone who has had a lot of experience in the corporate world and knows how things that work efficiently work…..someone whos had the experience to be able to start a national non-profit that has become incredibly successful in all 50 states. You know those are very difficult things to do. I would say probably a lot more difficult than being a public official.
Now Im hoping you can clarify your Second Amendment stance a bit in regard to semi-automatic weapons. Do you think we need any new gun laws to curtail those or do you think the current laws we have in place are sufficient? And also as a follow-up are there any gun laws youd like to see taken off the books or added to the books?
Well first of all we need to understand that the Second Amendment is there for a reason. Its a very important part of our freedom. ..Weve been armed for hundreds of years and weve been free for hundreds of years. So thats something that is invaluable. We absolutely cannot mess with the Second Amendment.
In terms of the kinds of weapons that people should be allowed to have…. if you can purchase the weapon legally then you should be able to have it. I dont think there should be any restrictions on that. A lot of people have misinterpreted something I said. I said If you live in a crowded area and your weapon is likely to fall into the hands of a crazy person I would prefer you not have it." Well I think anybody…. if they really stop and think about it would prefer that they not have it if its likely to fall into the hands of a crazy person. It doesnt mean that I think that people in inner cities shouldnt also participate fully in the Second Amendment.
Now on immigration I was a little confused. I was checking on it last night and reading in-depth on it. On one hand I read a quote from you that seemed to suggest we should stop cracking down on illegal aliens who are already in the country and give them citizenship. However you also seem to talk of a Canadian guest worker-oriented approach which would seem to suggest that we can get the borders under control and give illegals guest worker status. Can you clarify a little bit where you stand on the issue and also do you think we need to secure our border first or should we have a more comprehensive immigration approach?
I think there are two things that have to be done. You have to secure the borders and I mean all the borders not just the southern borders northern borders too because its not just people from Honduras were worried about. Its terrorists and I think thats urgent and I think it can be done within a year.
…And then you have to turn off the spigot for all the goodies the things that attract them here. If you seal the borders and turn off the goodies there wont be any reason for them to risk life and limb to come here. So I think that will stop the influx. You still have the 11 million people here many of whom dont know any other place. This is the only place they know; so yes we have to be compassionate in that sense of understanding that we should allow them to become guest workers. They can become guest workers if they enroll in the back tax program and continue to pay taxes forward. It does not mean citizenship; it does not mean voting rights. If they want those things they have to get in the back of the line and go through the process like everybody else because you have to pay homage to the people who have done it the right way. You cant just kick them to the curb.
So and just one further question on that: would you do that in a comprehensive fashion or would you think we need to do the security part first before we start discussing what happens to the people that are here?
Security has to be done urgently. Thats because there are people out there who want to destroy us and there are dirty bombs and all kinds of things they can be smuggling you know; we need to be very serious about this. Im not sure that some people actually understand the threat that were under.
Okay the Republican Party has done a terrible job overall of reaching out to black Americans. If the head of the RNC Reince Preibus came up to you and asked for advice on how the party could do a better job what would you tell him?
I would say youve got to talk to them. Youre not going to do a better job by not talking to them. So Id go out and explain to them what the Republican Party actually stands for. It wants people to move up. Romney did not articulate that very well. He just talked about the 47. He didnt talk about the ladder that allows you to climb out of there. So thats what the party actually endorses.
But if nobody knows this it doesnt do any good. So I would tell them youve got to get out there big time and talk about investing in people and talk about ways that that can be done and how the party is going to work with business industry academia Wall Street churches and community groups to get them to take the lead in terms of personal and interpersonal interactions because thats what actually brings people out of poverty. Trillions of dollars thrown at the problem since the 60s has done nothing to alleviate the situation.
You did mention Mitt there; so let me ask you how do you look at his campaign? What do you think he did wrong because in John McCains defense as unpopular as Bush was he had a very very tough job. But a lot of people thought Mitt had a very winnable race and he lost. When you look back at his campaign what do you think I mean do you think he made the right kind of case? Is there something you think he should have done differently?
I think he perhaps got some bad advice in terms of the 47. He should have never let that rest. He should have said But if I become President job number one is to make sure that people can climb out of that 47 and move into the fabric of success of their nation." I think that would have gone a long way. I think he capitulated on the economy the narrative that it was getting much better and he should have utilized graphics as necessary to show that it wasnt getting better and that the labor force participation rate was going down and what that meant. He needed to explain that to people. He didnt put on his teacher hat to teach people what the real facts are. Then he had a gift-wrapped present in Benghazi and didnt use it. After Hurricane Sandy he just like disappeared for a week at a critical time. So I mean those are big issues right there.
Now you said something interesting about Affirmative Action and let me quote you The real question is this: Who should receive extra consideration from a nation that has a tradition of cheering for the underdog? I believe underdog status is not determined any longer by race. Rather it is the circumstances of ones life that should be considered." How would Affirmative Action look if Ben Carson were in charge of it?
Well I dont call it Affirmative Action. I call it compassionate action and it simply means youve got two people applying for college admission. One of them is my son and he has a 4.0 average and perfect SAT scores and one of them is from Appalachia and he has a 3.8 grade point average still pretty good and he has close to perfect scores but hes in the 95
thpercentile but not the 100. His father was killed in the coal mines when he was 5. Hes been working all this time and still manages to accumulate that kind of a record. Im willing to give him some extra consideration but it shouldnt have anything to do with race. It should have to do with circumstances and everything in our nation should deal with circumstances and not with race. If we continue to do the race-based thing we will never get out of this ever and we need to move on.
Now let me ask you about a couple of issues that have been in the news lately: the NSAs having access to American phone records and the secret TPA trade deal thats been voted on in Congress despite the fact that the public isnt being given access to the details. Where do you stand on those issues? What do you think about the NSA and the trade deal?
Well the NSA should not be able to violate the 4
th Amendment. I just feel that is 100 wrong particularly given the fact that they can get a search warrant any time day or night if they have suspicion about somebody but to invade ordinary Americans privacy I am 100 against that.
As far as TPA Im for free trade but Im not for secrecy and so I personally would have gone back and re-worked that thing because Congress needs to recognize that they work for us the people. We dont work for them. They dont get to hide stuff like that from us. It just doesnt make any sense and its part of the problem that Thomas Jefferson talked about. He said if the people become less vigilant the government will simply continue to expand take over every aspect of our life dominate us and eventually we will turn into something else. Were on the way there. Weve got to stop it.
Now you have a lot of real world healthcare experience; so if you became President what would your approach to Obamacare and healthcare in general be?
I would want care to be in the hands of patients and the healthcare providers. Thats why Ive advocated the health savings accounts. Health savings accounts are talked about in the Affordable Care Act but only in a small area and its to limit them because I think they realize that this would be the major competition for Obamacare and they limit everything that would be major competition; doctors hospitals all those things cant do them anymore.
I would advocate a health savings account for everyone on the day they were born and keep it until the day they die. We pay for it with the same dollars that we pay for routine healthcare now except it wouldnt be as expensive. And you give people the ability to shift money within a family. So it basically makes every family their own insurance company. It gives you enormous flexibility to cover almost anything and since everything is coming out of your HAS the cost of your catastrophic insurance is going to drop dramatically. Of course that works great for most people.
What about the indigent? Well how do we take care of them now? Medicaid Medicaid budget $4 to $500 billion a year; about ¼ of our population partakes. Thats 80 million into $400 billion goes 5000 times. Five thousand dollars for each man woman and child you can do a lot with that. Concierge practices generally cost $2 to $3000 a year. Then youve got thousands left over to buy catastrophic insurance which is much cheaper now because every family is its own insurance company it makes people much more concerned about each others health. If youre smoking like a chimney your family members are going to be saying How come youre doing that?"
Some people say the indigent wouldnt be able to handle a health savings account because theyre too stupid. A lot of people in government like to make that claim. Its not true of course because they said that about food stamps. They said they wouldnt be able to handle those. They would go out and buy steak for five days and then be starving the rest of the month and they didnt do that. They learned how to manage it and they would learn how to do this also.
When somebody has a chronic disease like diabetes and they have a foot ulcer theyre not going to go to the emergency room and blow a bunch of money. Theyre going to go to the clinic where it costs 1/5 the amount get the same treatment but at the clinic instead of sending them out they say Lets get your diabetes under control so youre not back here in three weeks with another problem." A whole another level of savings begins to occur and a whole another level of responsibility. Any government program should be aimed at creating responsibility and not dependency.
So with Obamacare Barack Obama has repeatedly changed Obamacare without the input of Congress. If Democrats control the Senate in 2016 and you are President which is a possibility would you repeal the law even without the approval of the Senate?
Well that wouldnt be my first tactic. My first tactic would be to sit down and talk with people. Thats the big problem. We get in our respective corners and we put up defenses and we may in many cases actually want the same thing. That was one of the things that was really attractive about Obama when he was running in 2008. He said those things but of course he was just the opposite. He didnt want to do anything except my way or the highway but I believe its possible for us to actually work together. I would always go that route first.
And I have one last question for you. This is kind of a tough one. What do you listen to music-wise? Whats on your mp3 player? What are your favorite bands?
Classical songs classical music.
Classical?
I got involved with classical music when I was in high school and its followed me throughout my entire life and probably had a profound effect on my life because my wife is a classical violinist. When all of the residents would take pediatric neurosurgery they knew also that they would learn classical music during that time. It was fun.
I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Absolutely!
