Transcript from The Newsroom Aired March 22, 2010
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: Good to see you, my friend.
As Tony says, I'm Ali Velshi. I'll be with you for the next two hours today and this two hours every day. I'm going to try and take every important topic we cover and break it down for you, giving you a level of detail that's going to help you make important decisions about, well, obviously your health, your taxes, your
So let's get started. Here's what I've got on the rundown right now. A massive health-care overhaul is on its way to becoming the law of the land. So, what now? We've heard from the politicians. Now it's time to focus on you. How will health-care reform affect your health care, your costs, and your access to care? We're going to break it all down and talk to some experts about it.
Plus, there's another part of the bill out there that's important for anyone who's going to college, been to college, or supporting a college student. It would boost grants to millions of students and make Uncle Sam a one-stop shop for relatively cheap student loans. It's making private lenders a little bit worried, though.
Also on the rundown, your name, your birthday, your hometown. It's seemingly innocent information. So how does someone use it to determine things like your
All right. When your grandkids study
But that, of course, is not the end of the story or the end of the voting. Here's why. All right. The House passed the health reform bill on Christmas Eve. You'll remember that. That was the Senate passed it on Christmas Eve. That's that one.
It then went through a series of changes that most House Democrats never would have voted for the Senate bill without. So now the Senate has to pass those changes. This is so-called -- this is called the reconciliation process. But it can't even start until the first bill, which got passed last night, gets signed into law, which is probably going to happen tomorrow.
Now, assuming that all goes as planned, opponents, by which I mean Republicans and others, still have options. They can try to repeal the reform in Congress. They can challenge reform in the courts, and they can try to block the federal efforts in state legislators -- legislatures. We'll break down those options a little bit more later in this hour.
But first, one more look at the
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
REP. MARSHA
REP. PAUL RYAN (R), WISCONSIN: This bill is a fiscal
REP. JAMES MCGOVERN (D),
REP. JOHN LEWIS (D), GEORGIA: This may be the most important vote that we cast as members of this body. We have a moral obligation today, tonight, to make health care a right and not a privilege.
There are those who have told us to start over. There are those who have told us to wait. They have told us to be patient. We cannot wait. We cannot be patient. The American people need health care, and they need it now.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA),
REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC), MAJORITY WHIP: I consider this to be the
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VELSHI: OK. Well, with all that in mind, let's start drafting that history book I talked about.
Joining me to talk about the impact, the fallout, the future of health-care reform, CNN political analysts Roland Martin,
Thank you all for being with us. We were watching, David and Gloria, late
David, it really, one way or the other, wherever you stood on this, it was very clear from the Republicans, and from the Democrats, that they were all aware that history was being made last night.
DAVID GERGEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Sure was. That was the first rough draft last night, Ali. But I think we know today that, even as the ink starts to dry, that there are going to be more chapters yet to come.
Because this is a very polarized nation still. The president is going to set off on this blitz. He's going out to
At the same time, of course, the Republicans feel they have the bit in the teeth. And they're going to keep pushing and pulling to see if they can't derail this before it finally gets passed. I think that's unlikely. But more importantly, to win the fight for November and see if they can't roll back some of these provisions.
VELSHI: Right. And that's -- I guess that's the key part, when you said that was a rough night last night.
Gloria, we saw passage of the bill. The president's got to sign it. But really, what's going to matter is how this leads up to November and whether Americans say, as
Gloria, when you listen to John Boehner and you listen to Nancy Pelosi last night or any combination of Republicans and Democrats, you might have thought they were talking about two different things, two different bills.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Completely different things. I mean, it shows you how polarized the Congress is. And it shows you the differences in the way they think about the role of government.
What's really interesting about this, if you look at this historically, you have just passed a plan, a health-care plan that depends more and more on government. Yet, you have an American public that trusts government less at any time than it has since Watergate. It's lower, in fact, than it was during Watergate. This is a big risk for this administration.
And what they're banking on is that, once people get -- get to see what's in this bill, and there are going to be some things people are going to like coming down the pike within the next three to six months, that once they start seeing some of those things, they're going to say, "Gee, not so bad." And Republicans will have a very difficult time, they believe, putting the genie back in the bottle.
Do you want to repeal, for example, an enhanced Medicare prescription drug benefit for seniors? Do you want to repeal something that eliminates lifetime caps on your health insurance policies? You know, those kinds of things are going to be hard to take away from people. So they're banking -- they're banking very much on different sides of history here. And each of them believes the public in the end will side with them.
VELSHI: All right. Roland, I haven't heard from you yet.
ROLAND MARTIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: But Ali...
VELSHI: Hold on. Hold that thought, because I know it's going to be good. But hold that thought, because we've got to pay the bills. Stay right there, the three of you.
When we come back, Roland, I want to hear how they're going to sell this thing and how the test run's going to work and what your thoughts are.
Stay with us, Roland Martin, David Gergen, Gloria Borger. We're not going to finish this conversation. We'll continue talking about the real cost of reform, financial and otherwise, when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: All right. It's health care the day after. We're going to be breaking down, through the course of this show, what this means for your insurance, your access to doctors, your costs. But there's a big, big consequence politically to what happened last night.
David Gergen, Gloria Borger and Roland Martin join me right now.
We haven't heard from you yet this morning, Roland, or this afternoon. Tell us your thoughts.
MARTIN: Gloria talked about this distrust in government. But we must understand, one of the reasons there's so much distrust is because both sides have painted the other as being so corrupt. And so we forget the fact that this country is still split in so many different ways.
We look at all these different polls. The Republicans who are saying Americans don't want this. But the reality is, in many ways, it's 50/50.
And so I don't buy the notion that Democrats are the only ones who are going to be in trouble going into November when it comes to health care. You're going to have Republicans who are also going to have to defend why they would not support the uninsured.
Here's the other thing that really jumps out. We talk as if this election in November is sort of like November 2008. It is not a national election. In it there are small elections. There are congressional elections. And so what plays nationally may be a lot different than that particular congressional district. So the dynamics will be a heck of a lot different.
VELSHI: Well, let's think about this. Because we do have polling that people indicates that people are mad at both parties, and people are mad at incumbents.
But let me show you a new poll where we asked about government involvement in health care under the Democrats' bill: "What do you think of government involvement in health care under the Democrats' bill?"
Fifty-six percent of respondents said "too much." Sixteen percent said "not enough." And about 28 percent said "about right." So, you know, a bit of a plurality for the "too much," Gloria. What does that mean?
BORGER: Yes. Well, that's
And let me disagree with Roland a little bit. I do think that this first midterm election for this new president will be a national election. The Republicans are going to nationalize it. There are over 50 members who came in really new on Barack
VELSHI: Right.
BORGER: ... many of them in swing districts. And a lot of them we saw last night voted with Barack Obama on this health-care bill. And that could really, really hurt them.
VELSHI: David?
MARTIN: But Ali, the same...
VELSHI: Hang on a second...
MARTIN: The same poll you cited...
VELSHI: Yes. Go ahead.
GERGEN: Go ahead, Roland, please. Roland, please.
MARTIN: No, no. The same poll -- the same poll that Ali cited, Americans trust President Barack Obama more on health care. So the problem here is, they -- 56 percent say it's too much.
VELSHI: Yes. MARTIN: But more Americans trust the president on this. So it's really going to be his job to sell this to get them to rally behind him.
VELSHI: Which, David, a lot of people say is why we got to where we are, because the president decided to take a different approach and really sell it.
But the bottom line is, there are people last night saying this is historic; this is like Social Security; this is like Medicare. And there are some people saying this is the worst thing that ever happened to America. They've got to square the circle somehow, David.
GERGEN: Well, they do. But let me -- I happen to come down where Gloria is arguing here. But let me come -- let me make a different point.
There are all these advances -- and yes, people are going to wake up and see that they -- this year, they don't have their children who are going to be OK, even if they have preconditions. That's going to be helpful to the president. And there are other elements in this bill that are going to be very helpful.
But it's also true that people are now going to be looking to the government to -- as responsible for their general condition of their health care. And -- and premiums are going to continue to go up this year, Ali.
There are employers who are going to continue to lay off people, because it's too expensive. There are employers who are going to say, "Aha, here comes this great, big pool. I can just put my employees over in that pool."
And there's going to be -- and people are going to say, "I thought the government was protecting me now." And that protection is not going to be there.
BORGER: Right.
GERGEN: In some ways, I think both sides have oversold this. The -- the Republicans have argued that socialism -- and socialism in the morning, and people are going to wake up and see it's not there.
But the Democrats have sold this as there's way too much suffering. And tomorrow morning the suffering will be over. And it's not going to be over.
BORGER: You know, he...
GERGEN: This is a painful period.
BORGER: Here's the...
MARTIN: And the great fear, the great...
BORGER: It's sort of interesting. When you passed Social Security and Medicare, people knew exactly who was -- that was going to affect and how it was going to affect them. OK, Medicare...
VELSHI: Yes.
BORGER: ... you're over 65, whatever, it's going to help you out.
When you pass this health-care reform, it's so huge.
VELSHI: Yes.
BORGER: People are scratching their heads. That's why we're trying to explain it.
VELSHI: And that's what we're going to be doing. You've teed me up very nicely for that, Gloria, because we're going to get into some very specific discussions. Roland is going to come back a little later. We're going to talk about the students who are affected by this, because there's a whole part of this bill that affected students.
MARTIN: That's right.
VELSHI: But we're going to talk about costs and benefits. We're going to talk about benefits and who gets them.
So thanks to all three of you. It was really great to watch you through this whole process. And as David says, it's just the first wrap. We're going to be doing a lot more talking about this and it's effect. Thank you.
MARTIN: It was so rough on David, he came with no tie.
VELSHI: Doesn't have a tie on.
GERGEN: The "JK, USA" approach. The "JK, USA" approach.
VELSHI: That's right. It's part of the "JK, USA." It starts tonight, "JOHN KING, USA."
Thanks to all three of you for being here.