'Meet the Press' transcript for August 16, 2009

REP. ARMEY:  Listen, this—one of the fascinating things, by the way, about the Tea Party, Tea Party movement, it is, it is an enormously impressive grassroot uprising across the country, loosely affiliated people, and there’s probably a hundred, 200 different Web sites by different people.  Somebody in Oregon’s got one, somebody in Illinois.  We’ve got a situation with somebody in Connecticut that we did not know and who did not know us put out something that was mischaracterized and then attributed to us by somebody who obviously didn’t have enough diligence in their ability to do their research to get their facts straight.  These things happen.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

REP. ARMEY:  People get blamed for what other people do.

MR. GREGORY:  Beyond, beyond the...

REP. ARMEY:  But the fact is, that just causes further aggravation. The—especially when you start talking about elected officials, people that have the privilege of having news shows under the license granted by the federal government.  They should at least have the adult discipline to get their facts correct.

MS. MADDOW:  Are you a member of the Tea Party Patriots Health Care Freedom Coalition?

REP. ARMEY:  I’m a member of FreedomWorks, and FreedomWorks works with many people who fight for and, and argue on behalf of individual liberty.

MR. GREGORY:  All right, I want to move on.  One of the issues here is inaccuracies, myths in the debate.  What has dominated this week is this idea of death panels being part of the healthcare reform effort, the idea that somehow the government would countenance euthanasia against older Americans who are close to death.  And even Chuck Grassley, senator from Iowa, a Republican senator from Iowa who is negotiating healthcare reform on the Senate Finance Committee, said this during an event on Wednesday.

(Videotape, Wednesday)

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA):  In the House bill there’s counseling for end of life.

Offscreen Voice:  That’s it.

SEN. GRASSLEY:  And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear.  You should—you shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life.  You ought to have counseling 20 years before you’re going to die.  We should not have a government program that determines you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY:  “Pull the plug on grandma.” That’s not part of this debate. It’s not in the bill, Senator.

SEN. DASCHLE:  Well, David, it’s hyperbolic, it’s fearmongering, it’s actually politics at its worst.  That’s the kind of thing that generates the kind of anger and fear and anxiety that people have today.  You know, it’s, it’s amazing to me that a very good idea, one I’m sure that maybe even all of us agree with, that there ought to be some consultation, some opportunity to talk about these things outside of that moment when you’re at your most emotionally vulnerable state in life.  And, and, you know, the amazing thing is—and Johnny Isakson, a, a member of the, the Health Committee, actually offered as a mandatory requirement that there be this mandatory counseling. He—as it turns out, it, it was, it—they, they persuaded him to offer it as a voluntary measure.  But that voluntary counseling is something that we ought to be encouraging, not discouraging.

MR. GREGORY:  And in fact, Senator Coburn, the prescription drug bill that the Republican Congress passed back in 2003 had a similar provision, did it not?

SEN. COBURN:  I don’t know.  I wasn’t in Congress in 2003, so I’m not familiar with that.  But I was adamantly opposed to the prescription drug bill, mainly because it added $10 trillion to our grandkids’ debt.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

SEN. COBURN:  Look, the, the idea that we ought to talk about our future health and what our family and what we want done is a good idea, it’s legitimate.  What is not legitimate is having government even weigh in on it. It is intensely personal; your health care, your plans, your family.  There is no role for government in that.  And where we’ve seen a role—and, and this happens all the time, which goes to one of the things that never gets talked about in health care—is we have statements, living wills.  We have people who have made those very tough decisions.  And then, because they’ve made them, but because of the malpractice situation and liability, they’re ignored.  And we still intubate and put people onto ventilators that never wanted it because a family member threatens through a situation, even though you have that end of life counseling there.  So the—we need to get down to the basics of what’s really wrong with health care, and there’s a lot.  And it’s not the people who are complaining about it and it’s not the people who are debating it.  The fact is, is we—everybody wants to see some change.  Republicans want to see change, we just want to get there in a different way.  But the fact is, is we have a way too expensive healthcare system.  It is one of the best in the world, and we ought to see about changing.

MR. GREGORY:  And you want a reasonable debate?

SEN. COBURN:  Absolutely.

MR. GREGORY:  You said, however—this was a headline from The Washington Times, July 16^th:  “Coburn:  Dem health plan will kill Americans.” Really?

SEN. COBURN:  It will.  Absolutely.

MR. GREGORY:  Is that reasonable?

SEN. COBURN:  There’s—yes, it is reasonable.  That is—look, who—I still practice medicine almost every Monday, David.  I see patients.  How many people that are involved in this debate are actually in the healthcare system? Very few.  The fact is, is if you create a comparative effectiveness board, which there’s no question 70 percent of the people it will help, and it will help control costs, but 30 percent of the people it’s going to hurt.

SEN. DASCHLE:  David, we can’t...

SEN. COBURN:  Because we’re not—we’re not going to use...

SEN. DASCHLE:  That’s—you cannot, you can’t—Jim, you can’t make that assertion.

SEN. COBURN:  We’re not going to use the art of medicine.  We’re not going...

SEN. DASCHLE:  You just can’t allow that assertion to be made, because...

SEN. COBURN:  Well, we can.  Let’s look at the NICE system.

SEN. DASCHLE:  Listen, this is the recommendation.

MR. GREGORY:  Well, let’s end it...

SEN. DASCHLE:  Mayo Clinic—you’re saying Mayo Clinic, 30 people, 30 percent of the people at Mayo Clinic are, are disadvantaged because they have comparative effectiveness?

SEN. COBURN:  No, they, they—no, they do not.

SEN. DASCHLE:  Yes, they do.

SEN. COBURN:  Yes, they do.  But they don’t apply that in the same way that this plan.

SEN. DASCHLE:  And they, and they—and same with Intermountain, same with Geisinger.  The best institutions in the country, David, use comparative effectiveness and everybody benefits.  And to Jim’s point about the fact that, that we can’t have government involved with some kind of consultation, government runs the Medicare program.  The Medicare program covers virtually every senior in the country today.  If you’re not going to have the government do it through Medicare, who is going to do it?  You can’t simply just say go, go try to find a way to do it.  We know the status quo is a disaster.  What Jim is arguing for is more status quo, and we can’t accept that.

MR. GREGORY:  Senator, Tom; you keep calling him Jim.  You mean Tom.  Senator Tom Coburn.

SEN. DASCHLE:  I mean Tom.

SEN. COBURN:  Jim, Jim’s my brother.

MR. GREGORY:  Yeah, right.

SEN. DASCHLE:  Sorry.

MR. GREGORY:  Let me take a break here, because I mentioned we’re going to have some outside perspectives in this debate.  And I want to bring in Governor Bill Ritter; the governor, of course, of Colorado.  He was the—with the president, who was doing a town hall last evening in Grand Junction, Colorado.

And, Governor, I want to ask you about the president’s effectiveness right now and whether he is winning this argument.  That’s certainly been a motivation for him being around the country, doing his own town halls.  This is the Gallup poll on the president’s handling of the healthcare crisis:  approval at 43 percent, disapproval at 49 percent.  Those are the similar numbers that President Clinton had back in 1993, 1994.  What do you think he’s doing wrong?

GOV. BILL RITTER (D-CO):  Well, I don’t, I don’t know that you can blame the president for this.  I think a good part of this has to do how you opened the show, David, it’s, it’s the sort of partisan wrangling.  And maybe that’s even too nice of a word for what’s been happening with these town hall meetings. They’re capturing the attention.  Americans listen to where the conflict is, where the swords are crossed.  But they’re not, I think, getting all of the information about this.  My time yesterday with the president and my time at the town hall meeting leads me to believe that people who even are wondering about it but hear him speak about it, hear him speak about what this really does entail, they’re impressed by how, I think, by his vision for how we go forward with respect to healthcare reform.  It was, it was a very good town hall meeting.  He took questions from people who, I would say, disagreed with him coming into it.  Maybe they disagreed with him as they all left.  But I would also that for those folks who were sort of on the bubble, they, they have to respect that we need to do this and that he has a vision for how to do it.

MR. GREGORY:  Governor Ritter, what do you hear most?  The Rocky Mountain West is a key area for independent voters in the country.  The president successfully courted and won their vote in the election last year.  But it’s those independents who have a real concern about the role of government, about the mounting debt that could be associated with this healthcare plan.  What are you hearing?

GOV. RITTER:  Well, I think that’s the right point, David.  What I hear is this, that the healthcare system is broken.  So while there is this concern about a mounting deficit, there’s also this real concern about the fact that the system’s broken, that people view it as unsustainable, that people don’t view their health plan as something that’s really secure for them.  They could lose it tomorrow if their employer takes it away or if they lose their job. They want it fixed.  So they want it fixed, but they also are concerned about federal spending, they’re concerned about the deficit.  And they want to know, can you reform health care and at the same time do what’s necessary to control federal spending or to bring down the deficit?  The president actually addressed this yesterday in his town hall meeting in a very effective way.

MR. GREGORY:  All right, Governor Ritter from Colorado, thanks, as always. Always good to talk to you.

Rachel Maddow, does the president bear some responsibility?  Does he undermine his credibility when he makes some claims like, if you like your insurance you can keep your insurance, when a lot of people have said not really; employers could drop people from insurance if they wanted to move people into a public plan, if that existed?  It may be an aspiration, but he can’t guarantee it.

MS. MADDOW:  It’s the way—what he has suggested would guarantee it.  What’s happening, I think where the, where the president has some more responsibility is to give the Congress more direction.  I find it strange that we have—the American people have decided that there will be a lot more Democrats in Congress than Republicans.  The Democrats have a huge 60-seat majority in the Senate, and therefore they’ve got big majorities on every committee, too.  But Max Baucus, who is a Democratic senator, has decide on the Senate Finance Committee, which has this key role in what’s going to happen next, that they won’t have the whole committee do it.  It’ll just be three Democrats and three Republicans who are going to make that decision.  One of those Republicans is going around the country giving out copies of Glenn Beck’s book and saying that healthcare reform will pull the plug on grandma, Senator Grassley.  So for, for, for, for the Democrats in Congress to be essentially giving up their majority, deciding the way this is going to pass, I think is something that the president ought to weigh in on.  There’s a reason that Democrats have a 60-seat majority.  The American people voted for it, and I think they’d like Democratic bill.

MR. GREGORY:  Congressman Armey, Dan Balz wrote this in The Washington Post on Saturday about the political tactics involved here.  He wrote:  “The president and his team are receiving lots of advice from allies frustrated that the White House has not been more aggressive in firing back at reform critics and in attacking a strategy they believe is designed to bring down Obama’s presidency.” Do you think that’s what conservative opponents of his healthcare reform have in their gun sights right now?

REP. ARMEY:  Absolutely not.  I mean, this is the, probably the most—it’s certainly the, the largest hostile government takeover in the history of the country, one-sixth of the entire economy.  And it’s the most intimate.  I mean, you have people on the streets today, real people that are saying, “Am I going to in fact end up with a decision regarding how my liver infection is going to be treated in the hands of somebody in a bureaucracy with a degree in sociology?” And it is—if you read this bill, which is a frightening thing, by the way; I was reading it again yesterday.  It is unnerving to read this bill because of the growth of bureaucracy.  And the idea that—and I’ll give you an example.  I got a contact the other day, a fellow got in touch with me.  He has been on Social Security disability for about seven years.  And all of a sudden, out of the blue, he is in—he receives a letter saying, “We’re taking you off of disability and you need to send us $21,000.” He doesn’t have $21,000, and he can’t even figure out who made that decision.  He calls his congressman.  His congressman says, “I don’t know what I can do about that.” He tries to call his senator, he can’t get a call through.  So he calls me, for crying out loud.  And this guy doesn’t even leave in Texas.

MR. GREGORY: Senator Daschle, a hostile takeover of government?

SEN. DASCHLE:  Look, David, that, that argument suggests that Dick obviously enjoys the status quo.  The status quo eliminates 50 million people from insurance today, 12 million because they are discriminated against because they have disabilities.  Eighteen thousand people last year died because they didn’t have insurance.  That’s the status quo.  And rather than have government do it, apparently Dick would rather have the insurance companies do it, because that’s who’s doing it now.  Jon Stewart and others call it the American lottery.  You send in your forms and you hope you get something back from the insurance companies.  That, to me, is why the American people want to see change.  They want to see change because of the costs, they want to see change because they understand the quality is going down in this country and they want to see change because so many people aren’t covered.  That’s the status quo and that’s...(unintelligible).

SEN. COBURN:  Let me, let me dispute the question on quality.

REP. ARMEY:  (Unintelligible)

MR. GREGORY:  All right, but...

REP. ARMEY:  (Unintelligible)

SEN. COBURN:  There...

MR. GREGORY:  Senator:

SEN. COBURN:  There is no indicator anywhere in this country that the quality of medicine has declined.  There’s every...

SEN. DASCHLE:  Oh, that’s not true.  That is not true.

REP. ARMEY:  Absolutely.

SEN. COBURN:  That, that—no, that is...

REP. ARMEY:  Absolutely...

SEN. DASCHLE:  That is not true.

SEN. COBURN:  That is absolutely true.

SEN. DASCHLE:  What are we ranking in life expectancy in this country?

SEN. COBURN:  The—no, you—life expectancy is not an indicator when you have a society that’s built our way.

SEN. DASCHLE:  It’s not an indicator?

SEN. COBURN:  Look, let me finish, Tom.

SEN. DASCHLE:  What about, what about...

SEN. COBURN:  Let me finish, Tom.  We, we talk about neonatal mortality. Where’s the neonatal mortality?  It’s not in the private insurance plans, it’s in Medicaid.  Well, here’s the government-run program that is failing us in terms of neonatal mortality, and yet we use as an indicator neonatal mortality to say we need more government rather than less.

MS. MADDOW:  That is so disingenuous, that’s unbelievable.

SEN. DASCHLE:  Every...

SEN. COBURN:  The, the question—let me finish, let me finish, let me finish. There—the very fact that the president would suggest that doctors take tonsils out to make money rather than because it’s an indicated procedure is ludicrous.  Most people who get a referral to an ENT have already had one opinion that they’re worried.

SEN. DASCHLE:  This is, this is...

MR. GREGORY:  All right, quick comment...

SEN. DASCHLE:  ...totally off the mark.

SEN. COBURN:  It’s not off...

MR. GREGORY:  ...then I’m going to get in a break in.  Hold on, I’ll let you respond.

SEN. DASCHLE:  The Commonwealth listed us as 19^th; out of 19 industrialized countries, we rank 19^th overall.  World Health Organization listed us 37^th, just below Costa Rica and above Slovenia.  I mean, you don’t—you can rationalize all you want.  The fact is, the quality in this country—we have islands of excellence.

MR. GREGORY:  All right.

SEN. DASCHLE:  But we have a sea of mediocrity, and we’ve got to address it.

MR. GREGORY:  All right.  Let me, let me get in here.  We’re going to take a break here.  We’re going to come back and we’re going to talk about those three most contentious areas.  I want to get through all of them...

REP. ARMEY:  Right.

MR. GREGORY:  ...so we can really debate it.  We’ll come back.  More of our discussion after this brief break.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY:  More with our panel on healthcare reform; Armey, Daschle, Coburn and Maddow after this brief commercial break.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY:  We are back to continue our discussion on health care with Dick Armey, Rachel Maddow, Tom Daschle and Senator Tom Coburn.

All right.  As I mentioned, I want to get to the three most contentious issues of the debate.  If we can try to get to it all, we’re going to try.  There’s obviously a lot more to discuss even than just this.

The first issue has to do with funding.  How do you fund reform?  It’s going to be expensive.  Fifty million without healthcare insurance, a price tag of around a trillion dollars to be able to do that.  I want to bring in Charlie Rangel, congressman of New York, of course, chairman of the House Ways and Means—Manes—Means Committee.

Congressman, welcome.  I want to take you to Montana, this was the town hall debate that the president had, and listen to Rondy—Randy Rathie, what he had to say.

(Videotape)

MR. RANDY RATHIE:  Max Baucus, our senator, has been locked up in a dark room there for months now trying to come up with some money to pay for these programs.

PRES. OBAMA:  Right.

MR. RATHIE:  And we keep getting the bull.  That’s all we get is bull.  You can’t tell us how you’re going to pay for this.  You’re saving here, you’re saving over there.  You’re going to take a little money here, you’re going to take a little money there.  But you have no money.  The only way you’re going to get that money is to raise our taxes.  You said you wouldn’t.  Max Baucus says he doesn’t want to put a bill out that, that will.  But that’s the only way you can do that.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Congressman, isn’t he right?

REP. CHARLIE RANGEL (D-NY):  I can’t believe that our democracy is so fragile that people who have no answer to a very serious problem would just try to create animosity and hatred rather than to sit down and first find out what is the problem, how costly is it, and then what does it take in order to stop it? There’s no question that most everyone listening to this show have known some horrible story where someone has lost their home, their, their job, their, their, their—they, they—as a result of not being able to be able to cope with the cost of present health care.  And it’s getting worse, and more and more people are losing health insurance...

MR. GREGORY:  All right.

REP. RANGEL:  ...and the people who have it don’t have it.  We’re going to have to pay for it, but it’s going to be less in doing something right now than if we just let these things turn over to people...

MR. GREGORY:  How—but—OK, but how are you going to pay for it?

REP. RANGEL:  ...who have scripts.

MR. GREGORY:  You’re, you’re for a surtax on the wealthy.

REP. RANGEL:  We got to pay for it by cutting...

MR. GREGORY:  Is that going to work in the Senate, Congressman?

REP. RANGEL:  First of all, when we start talking about how you pay for it, you got to stop the hemorrhage.  And we can do that.  Much of the things that we’re doing out there that is the cause of the problem that we—we’re in can be taken care of by having the, the right procedures given to the right people, and making certain that we cut down on health care.  And when the people of the industry can tell you that they can save tens of trillions of dollars by working with the president, then you know that we can resolve most of this by stopping what we’re doing wrong.

MR. GREGORY:  But, Congressman, I want to...

REP. RANGEL:  And yes, it does take some money.

MR. GREGORY:  All right, but I want to focus on that.

REP. RANGEL:  It does take some money to kick this off.

MR. GREGORY:  My, my question—Congressman, my question to you is whether the surtax...

REP. RANGEL:  We’re talking about less than 1 percent...

MR. GREGORY:  Wait a minute, Congressman.  Can the surtax survive in the Senate?  You want to raise $544 billion of this price tag through a surtax on the wealthy.  Can that prevail in the Senate?

REP. RANGEL:  I don’t know what can prevail in the Senate.  All I know is this, that people are trying to use hatreds as a substitute for discussion. We should be talking about how much does it cost, is it costing too much, what is the Senate going to do, what is the House going to do?  But when people are paid to work up our town hall meetings, it’s clear they’re not looking for a solution, they’re looking for a political out of this serious question.

MR. GREGORY:  Congressman, the long...

REP. RANGEL:  And so we should be talking with the Senate.  We should be talking with them now.  They don’t even have a bill.

MR. GREGORY:  Congressman, if you look at the longer term picture here, beyond 2019, the 10-year window for this plan, the Congressional Budget Office has said that healthcare costs will go up at such a rate that proposed tax increases and other savings cannot keep pace and that the deficit will rise. Can the president keep his promise to not raise taxes on those making $250,000 or less?

REP. RANGEL:  Yes, he can and he will.  The problem that we have is, is what do you score, what does the Congressional Budget Office count as being a savings?  Is it people—what happened to the last few years of someone’s life? Is it the overcharging that the pharmaceuticals and doctors have?  Is it the number of people that go in and out of hospitals and we don’t reward those who do the right thing?  These are questions we should be talking about.  But what is happening now is a building up of hatred, and I am so surprised that our churches and our synagogues and our mosques are not coming here and saying they want the right thing done by poor folks who can’t afford health care, working people that don’t have health care and should have it, and people who do have health plans that really are hemorrhaging in increases in costs.  This is not a Republican or Democratic issue, this is an American, humane issue, and we’re not dealing with it with these type of town hall meetings.

MR. GREGORY:  Congressman Rangel, always good to have you.  Thank you very much for joining the discussion.

Senator Daschle, the savings that the president talks about; there can be some tax hikes on the rich, and then he talks about two-thirds of this program being paid for by other kinds of savings within Medicare.  Is that realistic, or are these just theoretical saving options?

SEN. DASCHLE:  Well, David, keep in mind that over the next 10 years our country’s going to spend $35 trillion on health care.  That’s the projection today.  That $35 trillion dwarfs the trillion dollars we’re talking about as up-front costs that we have to, have to, to construct in order to put this new infrastructure in place—including, for the first time, covering 50 million new American insured.  So I don’t think there’s any question that we can find, within $35 trillion, the savings necessary to come up with part of that cost for the new infrastructure.  And I think the president’s plan is, is, is, is about right.  It’s, it’s the balance between revenue on one side and cutting costs on the other.

MS. MADDOW:  I, I think the policy about what we actually do makes a big difference in terms of how much we have to spend and how much savings we get. One of the reasons that I think a lot of liberals and Democrats are in favor of a strong public option is because the administrative costs are so much lower in a government program, frankly, like Medicare, than they are in private insurance.  We waste so many billions of dollars on the administrative costs of having the private insurance-based system that we have now.  When you compare us to other industrialized country that don’t have that much of a reliance on...

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. MADDOW:  ...all these different thousands of insurance companies, we’re wasting a lot of money just moving paper around.  Ask healthcare professionals how frustrated they are...

SEN. COBURN:  You know, it’s...

MS. MADDOW:  ...with how much paperwork they have to...(unintelligible)...

MR. GREGORY:  Hold on, I want to get Congressman...

SEN. COBURN:  ...the numbers.

MR. GREGORY:  I want to get Congressman Armey on the tax question.

REP. ARMEY:  Right.

MR. GREGORY:  Are taxes going to go up beyond just the wealthy?

REP. ARMEY:  Of course their taxes are going to go up.  And, and, and what—one of the things about how to pay for it that I think is really causing a lot of distress and anxiety, especially among seniors—and where you want to talk about a real miserable instability I’ve observed the last couple of weeks, seniors today are captured by Medicare.  They have no choice, they can’t get out of it if they want to without being punished by the government. And it’s got $46 trillion worth of unfunded liability.  They’re seeing the baby boomers coming in, they’re scared to death for themselves right now, and this bill says they’re going to cut Medicare by $500 billion.  And the senior goes to a town hall meeting and he is frightened by this, and he says, “Leave your hands off my Medicare,” and he’s mocked by people in the news and he’s made a joke of by the president of the United States.  It’s no wonder these folks are frustrated and angry.

MR. GREGORY:  Rachel...

REP. ARMEY:  They’re scared to death of what the government’s going to do with them.

MR. GREGORY:  OK.  Rachel:

MS. MADDOW:  Do you really think that there’s a major uprising of seniors wanting to get out of Medicare?  I know you’re suing the government for your right personally to get out of Medicare.

REP. ARMEY:  Right.

MS. MADDOW:  But do you really think that’s the problem...

SEN. COBURN:  Is it...

MS. MADDOW:  ...that Medicare—that seniors hate Medicare and they want out?

REP. ARMEY:  No, I didn’t say that.  Most seniors—I was talking to my minister the other day.  My minister says, “Dick, I’m so fortunate I’m in Medicare.” I said, “Bless you, my, my friend that you get to be in it if you choose to be so.” But if you give a government program and you let me choose to be in or choose to be out, that’s generosity.  If you force me in, irrespective of my desires, that’s tyranny.  Now, if Medicare’s $46 trillion in the red, with no idea how we’re going to pay for it, why, why do they not let people who don’t want to be in out?

MS. MADDOW:  This is...

MR. GREGORY:  Let me—I want to get it...

REP. ARMEY:  I mean, that’s...

MS. MADDOW:  Just—I—very briefly.

REP. ARMEY:  This, this, this defies logic.

MS. MADDOW:  This is a really important point.  The anti-healthcare reform lobby thinks that Medicare is tyranny, OK?

REP. ARMEY:  I did—I said...

MS. MADDOW:  This is an—I mean, you said in 1995 that “Medicare is a program I would have no part of in a free world.”

REP. ARMEY:  Right.  Absolutely right.

MS. MADDOW:  You said in 2002, “We’re going to have to bite the bullet on Social Security and phase it out over a period of time.”

REP. ARMEY:  And I’m going to enumerate exactly what I’m talking about. Medicare...

MS. MADDOW:  Americans need to know this is your position and this is the position of the anti-healthcare reform lobby.

MR. GREGORY:  I’m going to, I’m going to stop this...

REP. ARMEY:  This is the Medicare law that was written and...

MS. MADDOW:  It’s very important to understand.

REP. ARMEY:  The Medicare law that was written by the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and the chief lobbyists of Blue Cross/Blue Shield, voted on without amendment as an amendment to Social Security, first imposes severe sanctions on physicians and medical providers that don’t comply with its requirements, and it says to seniors at the age of 65 you can no longer buy the insurance that you bought prior to 65.  And now by virtue of an internal memo—not a regulation, not a law—they tell seniors today...

MR. GREGORY:  All right.

REP. ARMEY:  ...if you don’t sign up for Medicare you’ll lose your Social Security.

MR. GREGORY:  I want to...

REP. ARMEY:  Now, if—you tell me what, what, what that has to do with anybody’s notion of liberty...

MS. MADDOW:  Tell me what that has to do with healthcare reform.

MR. GREGORY:  All right, I’m going to stop there.

REP. ARMEY:  ...freedom, the right to buy your own insurance...

MR. GREGORY:  Hold on.  I want to move on...

REP. ARMEY:  Even in Canada...

MR. GREGORY:  Congressman...

REP. ARMEY:  One final point.  Even in Canada, just last month the supreme court of the—of—in Canada said—ruled that the Canadian government cannot deny the Canadian citizen...

MR. GREGORY:  All right.  I want to...

REP. ARMEY:  ...the right to buy private citizen...

MR. GREGORY:  I’m going to move on.  I’m going to move on.

REP. ARMEY:  ...private insurance.

MR. GREGORY:  Another big area of contention, as if that’s not contentious enough...

SEN. DASCHLE:  Resolve that one.

MR. GREGORY:  ...is the issue of the public option.  This is the idea.  Well, I—still talking about overall costs—we’ll get to the public option in just a moment.  The overall sense of costs.

Senator Daschle, is it appropriate for the president to be singling out the insurance companies when he’s not also talking about hospitals, hospitals who are losing money over Medicare, also losing money over Medicaid, are then charging people with healthcare insurance more for some of those procedures, those costs that can—passed on to consumers.  Should he be talking about hospitals as well as the insurance companies?

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