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Major Health Care Vote; Profs Use Math to Help Detroit Kids Excel
Aired October 13, 2009 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Here are some of the other stories we're watching this morning.
An accused former fugitive is to be arraigned today for his part in the 1968 hijacking of a Pan Am flight heading from New York to Puerto Rico. Luis Armando Pena Soltren and three accomplices allegedly forced the crew to fly to Cuba instead. They voluntarily returned to New York this weekend in State Department custody.
And a late settlement by the children of Martin Luther King Jr. will keep them out of open court. They've agreed to split the money from the estate that they've been fighting over. Bernice King and Martin Luther King III had accused their brother Dexter King of taking money from the estate.
Pakistan's military may be setting up for another offensive against militants. Pakistani jets attacked positions near the border with Afghanistan this morning. The army says the targeted area of South Waziristan is where most of the militant attacks originate.
It's make-or-break time for health care reform. Here's what we know. The senate finance committee is meeting this hour with a final vote on a compromise bill to take place sometime today. The panel is considering a ten-year, $829 billion plan that includes consumer protections and federal subsidies to help lower income families purchase coverage. The plan would require all Americans to have health insurance but it does not include an option for a government- run health care plan.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the proposal would leave 25 million people uninsured by 2019. About a third of those uninsured would be illegal immigrants. Right now about 46 million people do not have health insurance.
Yesterday the health insurance industry put out a report saying premiums for a typical family would go up by $4,000 by 2019 under this plan. Our congressional correspondent Brianna Keilar has been following this reform proposal for many, many days and now it's made its way through the Senate Finance Committee at least for the vote. She's joining us live from Capitol Hill now. Good morning to you, Brianna. Take us through exactly what is going to go on today.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, here in a matter of minutes in the hustle and bustle has already begun behind me, Heidi. The Senate Finance Committee will meet and this will be the final opportunity for all of these Democrats and certainly the Republicans even though possibly all of them or all but one of them are expected to vote no on this.
But this is an opportunity for them to say their final piece before they have there are vote. That could take hours today. But Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of this committee, Democratic chairman, says he is confident that he has the votes to pass this. There is a Democratic majority on this committee so keep that in mind. But there's still a couple of Democrats who haven't committed to voting yes on this.
The sense is Democrats themselves are not going to want to be seen as scuttling this reform effort. And Heidi, something really interesting that I want to tell you, I just spoke with our congressional producer Ted Barrett who is staking out the back door into this hearing room. He spoke with Senator Olympia Snowe. She is the one hope for Democrats to pick up a Republican vote here today.
And you mentioned that report that came out from the insurance industry that said premiums would rise under this plan even more than if Congress were to do nothing with health care reform. She told Ted that she was critical of this report. She said that she was surprised the insurance industry released it on the eve of this really historic vote and she said - this is not verbatim but in short she said that she felt some of the assumptions in that report were flawed.
So she was hitting back there. She's been making positive signs about this bill and maybe another sign there that Democrats can continue to hold out hope for her support today.
COLLINS: Will they be talking about that report, do you think, today before the vote takes place?
KEILAR: You know, I'm not sure if they'll be talking about that today. They've been talking about it a lot. Democrats really on the defensive pushing back on it and saying sort of what Olympia Snowe said where they said they felt like it ignored policies that they have included that they say will bring down cost of health insurance.
COLLINS: All right. Well, we know that this isn't by any means final, this particular bill. What is next in the process after today?
KEILAR: This is a key hurdle but there are weeks and weeks ahead of us in terms of health care reform. After this passes assuming it does, it would have to be combined with the other bill in the Senate. So the Senate bills would have to be combined and then, you know, that's a process that takes days and then the Senate would have to debate and vote on their bill.
Same thing on the House side. The House bills would have to be combined and they're in the process of doing that now and then the House would have to debate and vote on its bill. The finally those House and Senate bills would have to be combined and go for debate and final passage of both the House and Senate before it ends up on President Obama's desk.
COLLINS: Which would be when? KEILAR: Well, the goal is obviously by the end of the year. So this is a process that we're going to be following for weeks and months.
COLLINS: All right. Very good. Brianna Keilar, Capitol Hill today. Thanks so much.
We do have more on those insurance industry claims about much higher premiums under the Baucus plan. We'll hear what the White House officials have to say on that plus take a closer look at exactly what those numbers mean.
To Afghanistan now and the debate over whether to send in additional troops. The top U.S. commander there, as you know, reportedly wants 40,000 or up to 40,000 more. But our Chris Lawrence asks what makes that the magic number?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One hundred thousand American and allied troops are already fighting in Afghanistan. To understand why it's believed General Stanley McChrystal wants 40,000 more, you need to look at the map the way military strategists see it.
KIMBERLY KAGAN, ADVISER TO GEN. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: What 40,000 does is it fills in the gaps around Kandahar, around Cos (ph), in Helmand province. It does not, however, cover the entire country.
LAWRENCE: Kimberly Kagan is an adviser to McChrystal. She says it's the minimum number to root out the Taliban and identify and protect potential Afghan partners but the military's own counter insurgency ratio dictates it would take well over half a million troops to secure Afghanistan's 33 million people.
(on camera): But General McChrystal is not applying this ratio to all of Afghanistan. He feels certain parts of the country are peaceful enough like the north or just not as important like the west that they don't need the same number of counterinsurgency fighters as these areas do.
KAGAN: And that's what gets him from a figure of hundreds of thousands of troops down to a figure such as 40,000 or 60,000 troops.
LAWRENCE (voice-over): Kagan said McChrystal would use those troops to turn the tide so the Taliban doesn't control every other town. She says 10,000 or even 20,000 troops just aren't enough.
KAGAN: It's not as though we can simply plug half as many holes with half as many troops and somehow seize the initiative from the enemy. On the contrary. Half as many troops will probably leave us pinned down as we are.
LAWRENCE: The problem is roughly 25 million Afghans live in thousands of small, rural villages scattered all over an area the size of Texas. Up to 80 percent of the population could still be out of reach for coalition troops.
(on camera): So with 30,000 American troops surged into Baghdad, that's where one out of every four Iraqis lived. Even if you take the top 30 most populated areas of Afghanistan, you still would only account for 20 percent of the population. That's how rural and spread out it is.
Chris Lawrence, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused of meddling in his country's election fraud investigation. According to the Associated Press the camp for Karzai's top rival says the incumbent pulled strings to force an election investigator to resign. He was part of the panel looking into fraud allegations in the country's August 20th elections. The probe has delayed the official results. No response yet from Karzai's camp.
We do have our eye on the market today. Yesterday, as you know, the Dow Jones industrials came really close to that 10,000 mark. Just 114 points shy when we started the day today. This morning as you can see the stocks are slipping just a bit. Dow Jones industrial average down by 60 points. Today one year ago we actually saw the largest one-day point gain. That's when the Dow closed up 936.42 points. That was a good day.
And this hour jury selection is getting under way in the first criminal trial stemming from the financial crisis. On trial, in New York, two former hedge fund managers with Bear Stearns. Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin are charged with securities fraud in connection with the collapse of the investment bank. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Is it possible to count the jobs saved by the stimulus plan? You might be surprised to learn where the benefits are being seen. Christine Romans joining us now, live from New York with more on this. Christine, states are kind of starting to report now on how they're using their stimulus money. What are they saying specifically about job creation?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: They're telling us that they have saved jobs in the classroom, Heidi. The states, as you know, have to issue a report card about where they've been using this money. Any recipient of your federal stimulus dollars starting this month, they have to tell the federal government how they're spending that money.
And we're getting these reports in from the state about how they use the money and we're seeing again and again that a quick and efficient use of this money has been to keep teachers on the job in the face of these big budget cuts. So what have we seen? 62,000 teaching jobs saved in California. In Michigan, 14,625 education jobs. In Missouri, 8,500 teachers. In Minnesota, 5,900. In Utah, almost 2,600 jobs. So clearly the biggest driver of stimulus jobs, stimulus spending from the states has been retaining teachers. And we're getting this sort of again and again. This doesn't mean to say that they're saving every teacher job or they're creating new teacher jobs -
COLLINS: Right.
ROMANS: But recently I was in Miami-Dade in Florida and 2,000 teachers were able to stay on the job for another two years just in that one school district because of the federal stimulus dollars. Some of these teachers don't even know that they've stayed on the job frankly because of the stimulus dollars but this is a way that many of these ailing states are using their stimulus money, Heidi. Tens of billions of dollars to keep teachers in the classroom.
COLLINS: Yes. You know, it's hard to calculate exactly how many jobs are being not saved but created.
ROMANS: That's right. And someone who has been overseeing this says the key is you are retaining jobs and not creating jobs first of all. Second of all, we are still losing teacher jobs and other kinds of roles and also we're using some of this money for construction jobs for example but it's hard to count those or it's hard to count some of the jobs that are around the construction jobs say, you know, maybe a deli clerk at a convenience store who is seeing more business or was hired because of all the work being done on a construction site.
Some of those jobs are temporary jobs as well. So trying to get a sense of the overall number of jobs created is going to be very, very difficult. The White House says that a million jobs have been saved or created. We will never be able to verify that, Heidi, because simply the nature of some of these jobs, this reporting however is the best kind of hard number we're going to have and we've been putting these numbers together for you for how it's been spent.
COLLINS: All right. Great point. Christine Romans, we sure do appreciate it. Live from New York.
ROMANS: Sure.
COLLINS: Out of control. A woman slammed her minivan into a gas station trapping a man under the burning gas pump. The whole thing caught on tape.
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: And fall is the time for extreme weather events, record breaking heat in Miami. Record breaking cold across the north with some snow and an old typhoon right now is slamming the west coast. All of that coming is up when the CNN NEWSROOM comes right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: All right. It's make or break day for the health care reform plan that is before the Senate Finance Committee today. You're looking at Max Baucus there. This was originally his plan. It has been amended quite a bit. No public option right now. It's going to be - after the vote today will likely be joined with another bill in the Senate. A more conservative one.
So we'll see what comes out of that. And then there'll be more votes and more discussion and more votes and more discussion and hopefully according to the president and the White House, the goal is to have some type of health care reform by the end of the year.
So today obviously a key hurdle to overcome. We'll keep our eye on that. Meanwhile, quick thinking employees saved a man trapped under a burning gas pump. Here's how it happened. A woman lost control of her minivan knocking over the pump. The guy filling up the white truck was trapped underneath. Employees quickly hit the emergency shutoff switch and stopped the potential explosion.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She grabbed the breakers. She grabbed the fire extinguisher, and we did what we could.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That man is alive today thanks to the quick-thinking staff here. They are absolute heroes. They saved his life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: The man suffered burns and bruises but is expected to recover. The elderly driver of the minivan was also hospitalized as a precaution.
Stories of survival from people who were actually dead. All this week Dr. Sanjay Gupta is showing us firsthand accounts of people who have actually cheated death and today we are talking about it on our blog.
Have you or anyone you know actually cheated death? We would love to hear your stories. We're getting a lot of them in our blog. Cnn.com/heidi is the address. You can go ahead and tell us your story there. You can also read a little bit more about the series "Cheating Death" and also Sanjay's book.
Let's go ahead and take a look. We're not taking a look just yet. We will take a look at some of your comments that have come in for us, really interesting stories too, in just a few minutes here in the CNN NEWSROOM.
It's still fall but boy, it looks like winter in Minnesota. Quite a bit of snow there. About two to three inches fell and it sure looks pretty. But here's the fallout. Flights were delayed about 90 minutes at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
And parts of Wisconsin already saw light snow as well. Not much of an accumulation in Eau Claire. It pretty much melted as fast as it came down. Other parts of the country will be seeing record cold. Meteorologist Rob Marciano joining us now. I did hear from the parents. They say 3.5 inches but warm weather there today too so it will probably melt away. MARCIANO: 3.5 inches in October. I don't care where you live especially mid October. If you live in Cut bank, Montana, Heidi, you got bigger problems than just a little bit of snow. Minus three yesterday. So record lows across parts of Montana with single numbers obviously in some spots below zero. Great falls, a warm spot at 13 degrees. They will be a little bit warmer today. Snowing though in places in Colorado. Certainly central Colorado seeing some rain right now.
My contact out there (INAUDIBLE) saying it is dumping and it will be dumping across the Sierras. With the snow levels very high today. We also have some rain that's right now happening in parts of Texas. This is all coming together to head toward the southeast. Remember the flooding that we had yesterday in parts of Georgia. That's taking a break today. But more rain coming tomorrow. So flash flood watch have been issued for that area.
Rainfall right now heavy at times in Sacramento and also in San Francisco to the point where we've seen a flash flood warning issued for Santa Cruz. As a matter of fact, let's pop that up right here. Actually from Monterey, this is coming out of Monterey, California. But I believe it's Santa Cruz county. There it is. Santa Cruz County. So this is in effect until 8:00 local time.
I suspect, Heidi, that we'll start to see more in the way of flash flood warnings come out of the San Francisco area with anywhere from one to maybe six inches of rainfall depending on your elevation. As far south as Los Angeles and San Diego. So there are areas that got burned badly by the wildfires the past couple of summers and they are susceptible as you may be aware of much less. So hopefully that doesn't happen but it's a concern going forward.
COLLINS: Yes. Absolutely. All right. Rob, we'll be watching that. Thanks so much.
MARCIANO: All right.
COLLINS: Health care reform after all these months of hearing about it, finally a vote. Right now a key senate panel preparing for that vote to move a proposed bill out of committee. We are watching and we'll bring you the vote when it happens.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: Time now to check the top stories we're watching this morning.
Three young people accused of attacking a Florida teenager who you see here are now under arrest. They were picked up late last night. Broward County police say the 15-year-old was doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire. He's in the hospital now with severe burns over 75 percent of his body.
In Michigan, a daughter turns her mom into police. She claims her mother is growing marijuana in their living room. Investigators say they found two large plants in 40-year-old Christine Conosolo's home. Conosolo says she only uses the pot for medical purposes to relieve back pain. As for her daughter calling police, here is what she told reporters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTINE CONOSOLO, MARIJUANA SUSPECT: Yesterday she did contact the police.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you think having your daughter make that call?
CONOSOLO: Well, she's obviously, you know, making a stand for what she believes in and I encourage her to do that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: Charges cannot be filed against Conosolo until state lab analysis confirms that the plants are in fact marijuana.
In Virginia, the new Miss Hampton University is stirring controversy. Twenty-two-year-old Nicole Churchill (ph) became the first white winner at the historically black college. She competed against nine black students in a scholarship pageant last week. She's from Hawaii and wrote President Obama to tell him her crowning is causing division on the campus. She invited him to visit and speak about racial tolerance.
A key vote expected very soon in the debate on health care reform. In a blistering attack yesterday, the insurance industry claimed it is going to cost you and me more money in the form of higher premiums. Here to talk about that a little bit more, senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. So is this really true? Because we're hearing a lot of different things from two different sides.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: The great thing about the future is that everyone gets to have an opinion about it, right? This is a law that may or may not go into force. In some ways who really knows what it will do. It's all about economy and market forces. But according to the insurance industry, the Baucus bill is going to drive up insurance premiums and that the average person is going to end up paying more.
However, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which analyzed this last month, they say not true. They say under the Baucus bill people will actually end up on average paying less than they would without the Baucus bill. So, I guess you just get to pick who to believe, the insurance industry or the Congressional Budget Office?
COLLINS: Does it have anything to do with how many people will in fact be covered and how many people will not when all is said and done?
COHEN: You know, in a way it does. Here's the reason why, the insurance industry under this bill would be required to insure everybody so if you had a pre-existing condition now, currently, they would tell you to go away. But under the Baucus bill they would have to take you. So the insurance industry says that's what's going to drive up the prices and that left a lot of people saying, well that's weird.
Because you folks have the insurance industry have supported that concept all the way along. And so what the insurance industry said in response to that is, well, we supported it because you said that there would be a mandate that everyone has to get insurance, which makes that pool nice and big. But that mandate they say isn't strong enough and it's too easy say to say well I don't want to get insurance.
COLLINS: Yes. So how could the two sides, if you will, because there really are a lot of different sides, a lot more than just two, but how can they be so vastly different on this?
COHEN: It really is because of the pre-existing condition situation. The insurance industry says look, we're only willing to insure everyone if you make everybody get insurance and they say the mandate, the penalty for not getting insurance, just isn't strong enough.
It isn't strong enough and too many people aren't going to buy our products. Whereas the other side would say no the mandate is strong enough. So it all has to do with is there a big enough penalty for not getting insurance?
COLLINS: Understood. All right. We'll be talking a lot more about it. Supposed to have some sort of bill in place by the end of the year. Where are we now?
COHEN: October. Middle of October, I know.
COLLINS: All right. Senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, thank you.
Teenage girls needing extra cash may be designer clothes or even purses. They go on dates with men for money and those girls as young as 13 know sex is involved.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: The headlines out of Detroit's public school system have been grim. A dismal graduation rate, a massive budget deficit, even a possible bankruptcy filing but there are places where kids are finding the inspiration to excel. Poppy Harlow visited one for "CNNmoney.com: Assignment Detroit."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
POPPY HARLOW, CNNMONEY.COM (voice-over): Detroit may be trying to reinvent itself but when it comes to educating its children, the word "struggle" only begins to describe the situation.
PROF. LEONARD BOEHM, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, MATH CORPS: Almost every kid has to walk through a metal detector just to walk to school. GERALD MARTIN, STUDENT TEACHER, MATH CORPS: One of my students said he and his friends mentally prepare themselves for what to do if someone puts a gun in your face.
HARLOW: Only 58 percent of Detroit Public School students graduate from high school and the school system right now is battling a $259 million budget deficit.
BOEHM: Let's start it off.
HARLOW: But as desperate as the situation may be, two Wayne State University professors have found success inspiring Detroit kids...
Of all places, a math camp.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Remember, you want to play mathematics up here, you keep it simple. OK.
HARLOW: In 1991, with just a few kids at first, professors Leonard Boehm and Steve Khan started Math Corps, a free six-week program for youngsters grades 7 and up.
What's different? Complex and often scary math problems are transformed into team challenges. The curriculum creates an environment where supporting others is central to learning.
LASHONTE LUKE-OWENS, STUDENT, MATH CORPS: We have a support system. We support people like this. And, like, when they get it right, we agree so it makes them feel happy when they turn around and they see all of these people agreeing with them.
HARLOW: Math Corps now accepts 500 students per year. They come from different backgrounds with different abilities. Not only to learn, but also to teach.
PROFESSOR STEVE KHAN, DIRECTOR, MATH CORPS: Kids teaching kids works unbelievably well because it's not kids teaching kids. It's kids caring about kids.
HARLOW: And the proof is in the numbers. Ninety percent of students who complete Math Corps graduate from high school, and 80 percent go on to college.
PROFESSOR LEONARD BOEHM, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, MATH CORPS: The fact that you have them on a college environment at a young age -- sorry. I'm going to lose it. That plants that seed in them. You are worth something. You're worth 100 points.
KHAN: We believe we can not just change the school system, but change, you know, the city in a fundamental way.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: Poppy Harlow joining us now from New York with more on this. Great story, Poppy. So, the founders clearly think the program can change Detroit for the better, but exactly how does that translate?
HARLOW: It's a great question, right? Because so far, they have touched about 2,500 kids lives since they started this all of the way back in 1991. But the situation in Detroit is just so desperate they told us most of these kids come from broken homes already, so having them on that college campus for those six weeks in the summer teaches them what they can be. It gives them hope. They don't feel any boundaries.
Also, one of the students we talked to told me she learned respect for others. She said, "Now we open the door for other people. We never did that before." It's those little things that they learn from a math camp, which is so phenomenal. Which kid wants to go to math camp? These kids are applying in droves just to get in to go, Heidi.
So, it's really lessons far beyond the math problems they learn that seems to make a big difference in this city. That's one of our news stories from "Assignment Detroit." I want to point you to the page. CNNmoney.com/detroit for more stories like that one, Heidi.
COLLINS: I loved math camp.
HARLOW: You did?
COLLINS: I didn't go to math camp.
HARLOW: You're such a smarty pants.
COLLINS: I'm just kidding. All right, Poppy. Thanks so much. Great story.
A growing number of economists say the recession is over, but it could actually be a while before Main Street feels it. Susan Lisovicz on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange now with the outlook. We've been talking about this for a long time, Susan. Things might look good on the Stock Exchange. We're looking now at the Dow. Looking pretty good. But feeling it is an entirely different thing.
SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No question about it. But at least there is the view that things are getting better. That is an improvement, believe me, from what we heard over the last year, Heidi.
This new survey from the top economists across the country say that most of them, more than 80 percent in fact, say that recovery has begun. In fact, only 9 percent say the recession is still going on. This is hardly a contrarian view. Lots of economists, including Ben Bernanke, have said the same thing.
The official view comes from a different group. Usually happens so late after the fact, Heidi, that it's a nonevent. We have seen recovery here on Wall Street. One of the ways we measure it is the stability of the financial markets.
You mentioned, Heidi, early on that one year ago today the Dow surged to its biggest one-day point gain ever. 936 points. We enjoyed that day. Especially, Heidi, because for the previous eight sessions, the Dow lost 2,400 points. It was what the "Wall Street Journal" called a slow motion crash. Two days after the biggest one- day point gain ever, the Dow lost almost all of it. More than 700 points...
COLLINS: Day after day after day, the biggest roller coaster ride any of us have ever been on.
LISOVICZ: Exactly. So, that's improvement. That's improvement that the market stabilized, and that we are getting closer to Dow 10,000. Right now, you see the Dow and NASDAQ, the S&P 500 all down modestly (ph). It's kind of a quiet day on the Street. We'll get a lot more earnings reports in the days and weeks to come. Heidi.
COLLINS: Yes. Certainly. You kind of can't talk about one without the other. When we talk about recovery, obviously, the big question ends up being the job market.
LISOVICZ: That's exactly right. And this is something that was basically unanimous in the survey from the National Association for Business Economics, which says that it will be years before the U.S. recovers all of the jobs. 7.2 million and counting.
In fact, more than half of them said 2012 will be when we recapture those jobs. Thirty-eight percent say 2013 or later. The good news here -- I put that in quotes, Heidi -- is that from the optimism has markedly improved from the last time the survey was done in the spring. Most of them didn't even see recovery this year. They were having problems seeing it even next year. So, the optimism isn't improving, but when we feel it, it's going to take a while. Heidi.
COLLINS: Yes. Absolutely. Susan Lisovicz, thank you.
LISOVICZ: You're welcome.
COLLINS: Health care reform headed for a vote. The Senate Finance Committee meeting right now, and sometime today expected to pass a proposal pushed by its chairman, Max Baucus. The $829 billion plan would require all Americans to have health insurance.
Live pictures there for you of Orrin Hatch. Congressional Budget Office says the proposal would leave 25 million people uninsured by 2019, about a third of them illegal immigrants. If the Finance Committee approves the plan today, senior Senate Democrats would begin meetings to try to merge it with more liberal proposals from another committee. Here is what Senator Max Baucus said just a short time ago.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MAX BAUCUS, CHAIRMAN, FINANCE COMMITTEE (D-MT): Americans are looking for commonsense solutions. Americans want a balanced plan that takes the best ideas from both sides, and Americans want us to craft a package that will get the 60 votes that it needs to pass.
(END VIDEO CLIP) COLLINS: A bombshell just before the Senate Finance Committee vote. The insurance industry, which had seemed to be on the same page as the White House on the Baucus plan, released a report about the proposal's significant cost increases. CNN's Jim Acosta has that story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On the eve of a critical vote in the Senate Finance Committee on health care reform, the nation's health insurance industry offered up a big dose of skepticism. Unleashing a report commission with the accounting firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers, the industry predicts the finance committee bill will drive up premiums 111% in ten years versus 79% under the current system.
The industry blames the bills taxes targeting insurers, telling reporters in a conference call those taxes would be passed on to consumers.
KAREN IGNAGNI, PRESIDENT AND CEO, AHIP: Imposing new taxes and fees on health care services depend on insurance flies in the face of the goal of reducing health care costs.
ACOSTA: A spokesman for Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus called the report "a health insurance company hatchet job, plain and simple."
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Karen represents America's health insurance plans.
ACOSTA: The report came as a surprise to the White House, which invited them to craft health care reform earlier this year.
LINDA DOUGLASS, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF HEALTH REFORM: What they did here was exclude all of the features of the Senate finance committee bill that lower costs for all Americans.
ACOSTA: So what are the facts? Last month the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said quantifying the bill's effects on premiums would be difficult. But the CBO added overall premiums would be higher because future policies would cover preexisting conditions.
The budget office also pointed a finger at the industry, noting that 23 percent of some premiums go to administrative costs.
RICHARD KIRSCH, HEALTH CARE FOR AMERICA NOW: The idea the insurance industry would complain about high premiums is like the Yankees complaining they are hitting too many home runs. It is totally preposterous.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think they are showing their cards?
KIRSCH: They are showing their cards.
ACOSTA: Not surprisingly, the insurance industry's report also takes a swipe at the public option, the idea giving the uninsured a choice of a government health care plan, something now backed by the nonprofit group behind Consumer Reports.
JAMES GUEST, CONSUMERS UNION: We are very strongly in support of the public insurance option as an option because we think that you can't get health care costs down unless there really is true competition in the health insurance marketplace.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: Jim Acosta joining us now from Washington. Boy, Jim, a whole lot of numbers. A whole lot of different takes on all these numbers. Is there some type of completely and totally independent study on this?
ACOSTA: Well, if you can find an independent study, good luck. But there are people with points of view on this. And there is an economist at M.I.T who was very instrumental in the drafting of the health care initiative they have in Massachusetts, which was passed under a Republican governor up there, Mitt Romney. His report actually slams the insurance industry's report that came out yesterday, saying that some of their conclusions were flawed.
The insurance industry says that because the penalties for Americans who don't get coverage under those mandates are not strong enough that there would not be an overall effect on lowering costs. This economist up at M.I.T., John Gruber (ph), says that's not the case. He has also found that premiums in some cases would go down rather dramatically in some cases, so you are already starting to see some other viewpoints come out on this.
Another viewpoint, Olympia Snowe, the main Republican who everybody is watching today. She just gave a reaction to one of our CNN producers on the Hill and said that she was taken aback by this insurance industry study because she thought that this Baucus bill coming out of the Finance Committee was going to send the insurance industry millions of new customers through these mandate, and so she was saying, "What are they complaining about?".
COLLINS: Got it. There are a lot of opinions we'll be checking out throughout this very long process. A lot more to come, even though we are expecting this vote to take place today. Jim Acosta, thank you.
ACOSTA: You bet.
COLLINS: Time to check on top stories we're watching this morning. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sitting down with the Russian president Dmitriy Medvedev outside Moscow. Earlier, she met with Russia's foreign minister. They talked about the next steps for missile defense and a nuclear arms control treaty.
Attorneys are getting the first look inside Burr Oaks Cemetery near Chicago. Four workers are accused of digging up bodies and reselling the plots. The gates were opened temporarily so attorneys could take pictures. Hundreds of families are suing Burr Oak's owners. The cemetery may finally reopen for relatives next month.
The fight is over between Martin Luther King Jr.'s kids. The siblings reached a settlement that will keep them out of a jury trial. They agreed to split money from the estate they've been fighting over. Bernice King and Martin Luther King III had sued their brother, Dexter King, who was also the estate administrator.
Happening right now, health care reform. You're looking at live pictures from Capitol Hill. We're watching and will bring you the Senate committee vote when it happens.
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SEN. OLYMPIA SNOWE (R), MAINE: ... providing instructions and recommendations to the drafting staff to make sure that it is totally consistent with the interpretations upon which you based your scores of this package.
I mean, it's critically important. Because if there are significant departures from the legislative interpretation, that obviously could drive up the price. And I know from past experiences we have discussed there, there have been some uneven experiences with other committees. I would hope that we could -- maintain the integrity of the score of this package.
So, how best can we do that, and what instructions would be helpful in this process?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, Senator, the process of drafting legislative language and our producing an official cost estimate of that language takes a good deal of time, as I said before here. That's partly because of the intrinsic difficulty of writing in legislative language to achieve the goals that are laid out in the more conceptual language we have seen so far.
It's also the case that in the process of writing out exactly what is to happen in legislative language, it often turns out that our understanding of what a proposal was intended to do does not exactly match the understanding of the drafters of the proposal. When we discover instances of that, our approach is to point out to the drafters that this language does not do what we thought they were trying to do.
At that point, it's, of course, the drafter's choice whether to stick with the language that they have with their original intent, and then we will then factor that into our next score, or they can respond that they are interested in following what we believe their intent to be and adjusting the language to meet our understanding of what they had in mind in the conceptual language stage.
And then, in that case, if it can be drafted in fact to do what we think it set out to do, that will not affect our score. I don't know procedurally how that works, to tell you the truth, or what instructions you might give. But that is the issue is that often we define these cases of what we have in mind is not exactly what drafters had in mind.
SNOWE: Right. So, there could be significant variances in interpretations, I gather...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There can be, Senator.
SNOWE: ... and you would go back and forth between you and the staff on these issues?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, in particular -- there's also involvement, of course, of (INAUDIBLE) senators for Medicare and Medicaid services that have expertise on how to implement -- will be responsible for implementing much of the language involved.
SNOWE: I hope, Mr. Chairman, there would be consistency in that regard so there isn't a departure from the intent and integrity of the CBO scores as they've interpreted in this mark. Because that will be critically important. We'll need to be vigilant in that regard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're right, Senator. In fact, there's several stages there. There is one that is the so-called merged bill, and that has to be scored before it can go to the floor. And then afterwards the bill, it finally passes the Senate. Long lines that you discussed is Dr. Elmendor (ph) to make sure the intent is maintained in the actual language so the score reflects the actual intent of its...
COLLINS: All right. Just wanted to bring you a bit of flavor from what is going on on Capitol Hill right now. As you know, they're getting ready for a vote. Not exactly sure, of course, with all of these discussions that are going to take place exactly when that vote is going to happen. Likely to happen and intended to happen sometime today, but the discussion happening now.
We wanted to make sure we got to Republican senator from Maine, Olympia Snowe there. Obviously, she's been seen as the Democrats' best hope for getting some type of Republican support on this current health care reform plan that's before them and that they will be voting on today. She was talking with one of the representatives from the Congressional Budget Office there.
So, we continue to watch those live pictures. We'll bring you any more snippets of information just as soon as they come available to us. For now, a quick break. We're back in a moment.
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COLLINS: "Cheating Death." It's the title of a new book by our Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and also a series that you can see over the weekend Saturday and Sunday 8:00 at night. We'll remind you of those times in just a moment.
Incredible stories of people who have actually died and come back to survive. So, incredible series. We also wanted to talk to you about it today. We've been asking if you have, in fact, cheated death or know anyone who has. We've been getting even more amazing stories. We want to get to some of them right now over to CNN.com/heidi. And to the Heidi Mac.
This one says, "I was born with my aorta on the wrong side, and three holes in my heart at nine weeks old. I was in surgery, and I died twice on the table. But I am here now at the age of 23." Wow.
This one from Christina. "Several years ago, our next door neighbor and good friend had a heart attack and went into a coma. The doctors told her family she was brain dead after doing several tests and asked the family to spend the weekend contemplating pulling the plug. Monday morning, they returned to the hospital having made the decision to end her life. When they got to the hospital, she was awake and completely lucid. She had no sign of brain damage and made a complete recovery. Makes you wonder if we know as much about the brain being dead as we think we do."
Unreal. We continue to get these stories in. CNN.com/heidi if you would like to share some of yours.
Health care reform after all these months of hearing about it. Finally, a vote. Right now key Senate panel preparing for a vote to move a proposed bill out of committee and onto the next step. We're watching, and we'll bring you the vote when it happens.
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COLLINS: Teenagers meeting men for money with sex part of the deal. It sounds like prostitution. But for the Hong Kong girls who do it, it's just compensated dating. CNN's Pauline Chiou has the story.
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PAULINE CHIOU, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Hong Kong, girls as young as 13 are selling their time and often their bodies for quick cash. It's called compensated dating, but in many cases, it's no different from prostitution. Teenage girls spend time with an older man for a fee. There's an understanding the date can involve sex.
'SZE,' FORMER COMPENSATED DATER (through translator): My first customer was an ordinary man in his 40s who skipped dinner part and went straight to the guest house for sex.
CHIOU: She doesn't want to be identified except by her nickname "Sze." Now 19 years old, Sze has quit compensated dating, but says she started when she was 16. She wanted extra money, not out of desperation, but to buy designer clothes, bags and cosmetics. How she started is also alarming. Several classmates at her all-girl school were already doing it.
'SZE,' (through translator): They introduced me to these chat forums (ph) and told me to try to meet men there. That's how I started.
CHIOU: Social worker Chiu Tak-Choi is working with 20 girls who are trying to leave the life of compensated dating. He says the number of his cases has doubled in the past two years.
(off camera): It's called compensating dating, but it's really prostitution, right?
CHIU TAK-CHOI, SOCIAL WORKER: For the girls, they don't think so. Because they think they can quit any time. Just (INAUDIBLE). They post their details in the Internet. They think they can quit. They think they have a lot of power to control whether they do it or not. So, they think they're very much different from prostitution.
CHIOU(on camera): A 14-year-old girl told the social worker she got involved with compensated dating because she lost her cell phone. Her parents wouldn't buy her a new one, and she felt the fastest way to earn money to buy a new cell phone was through compensating dating.
(voice-over): Legal experts and police say compensated dating is prostitution, and in Hong Kong that's illegal. Police post a warning on this dating Web site discouraging compensated dating, but if you scroll past the warning, you find plenty of offers.
Here, 21-year-old Candy says she needs to pay off credit card loans, and is offering sex for 800 Hong Kong dollars, or 100 U.S. dollars.
Police have difficulty shutting down these sites because it's hard to find the and prove there is the intention of solicitation. Compensated dating has gained notoriety after a gruesome murder last year in Hong Kong. A man hired a 16-year-old girl for a compensated date, killed her, dismembered her body and flushed the remains down the toilet. That man was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. As for Sze, she was always aware of the potential dangers and tried to set ground rules with her clients.
SZE (through translator): Actually, there were quite a few strange customers who weren't doing what we had agreed upon over phone. Usually, I stated a price and conditions for a deal. Like they had to wear condoms, and the price was for only one time. But sometimes they just refused and asked to have sex two or more times.
The most horrible experience is when one customer asked for sex. I refused, but then I gave in because he offered more money.
CHIOU: Sze says she has tried to talk her friends out of compensated dating, but they're not listening. Social workers say the key to helping these girls is finding them. That's proving to be tough. Many girls go on compensated dates after school or on the weekends without raising any suspicions.
Pauline Choo, CNN, Hong Kong.
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COLLINS: A big day for health care reform. Finally, a vote on a Senate committee plan, but what happens after that? I'm Heidi Collins. CNN NEWSROOM continues with Tony Harris.
