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Bill Clinton on Obamacare; Desperation in Philippines

Aired November 12, 2013 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. I'm John Berman in New York here with Zoraida Sambolin. We are holding down the fort today for Brooke Baldwin, who is off.

ZORAIDA SAMBOLIN, CNN ANCHOR: And Bill Clinton today is holding Barack Obama's feet to the fire on his pledge that, under Obamacare, we can all keep our health insurance if we want to.

BERMAN: We have heard the horror stories. Well, so has Bill Clinton.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I met a young man just this week who has a family, two children, bought in the individual marketplace. His policy was canceled and one was substituted for it that doubled his premium.

Now, I asked him, I said, same coverage? He said, yes. And I said but are your co-pays and deductibles the same? He said, no, they're much, much lower. He said, in the years when I used health care, I might actually save money. But he said, we're all young and we're all healthy.

So, I personally believe even if it takes a change in the law, that the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAMBOLIN: So, lest we forget, the president likes to call Bill Clinton his explainer-in-chief. Here's Bill Clinton explaining to him he needs to keep his word.

Again, here's that quote for you. "I personally believe even if it takes a change in the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got," health insurance, that is.

Dana Bash with us now from Capitol Hill. She is our chief congressional correspondent.

And here we have Bill Clinton, elder statesman, Democrat, telling the president, look, you have to keep your word on this. But change the health care law, is that even possible, Dana?

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, it's unclear what the answer is to that yet. But what is clear is that the political pressure and the political desire from Democrats to at least do something is growing by the minute.

And what is going to happen this week on Friday is House Republicans are going to put a piece of legislation on the House floor for a vote that will at least in some way, shape or form suggest that people can keep their health care. I just talked to a senior congressional Democratic source who said that they believe that this is almost a de facto deadline for the White House to come up with a fix, because, if they don't, you're going to see more and more Democrats defy the White House and vote for this Republican bill in the House.

And, in fact, just to sort of underscore that, Steny Hoyer, the number two Democrat in the House, just had a briefing with reporters earlier and he said that he isn't sure how he feels about that Republican bill. This is the guy who usually whips or tries to get Democrats to vote against Republican bills.

It really gives you a sense of where Democrats are. So does what Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, said earlier today to Ashleigh Banfield.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN (D-IL), MAJORITY WHIP: We need to be open to constructive changes to make this law work better. But there are those, frankly, who don't want it to work at all. If those on the other side are willing to sit down in a constructive fashion, move us towards our goal of making health insurance available to more and more Americans and reducing costs, that's a good, positive thing to do.

I would say to President Clinton, if we can bring the bipartisan group together, we can start to solve some of the problems we're facing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I have to say, this is where we are, we tend to be sometimes in the danger zone with regard to Congress and politics and political pressure because the feeling on this is something that I have seen many times before covering Capitol Hill, is that there's such a political desire to make a statement and say that you have done something and the question is whether or not the actual legislation that they will be voting on, never mind will it actually pass, ultimately get to the president's desk, but is it even going to do what members of Congress are hoping it will do, which is to solve this problem, make people able to keep their health insurance policies that they like as a president promised, and, of course, as we know, he apologized for, because it's not possible right now?

SAMBOLIN: All right, Dana Bash, senior congressional correspondent, thank you.

BERMAN: Let's talk more about this now.

With us from Washington, Amy Holmes, anchor for Glenn Beck's station The Blaze, and from here in New York Democratic strategist Robert Zimmerman.

Amy, let me start with you.

Bill Clinton now saying that some changes need to be made to the health care law. What do you make of that?

AMY HOLMES, "THE HOT LIST": Well, it puts a lot of pressure on President Obama, doesn't it, to keep that promise that he made to the American people.

But when it comes to Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton does what is good for the Clintons, and I wonder if this isn't a trial balloon for Hillary Clinton and a possible run in 2016 to position her with being on a popular side of this, which is if you like your plan and if you like your doctor, you should be able to keep it.

BERMAN: Wow, multi-level conspiracy theory here. You think he's doing this for the future, for a future campaign.

Robert, what do you make of that?

ROBERT ZIMMERMAN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, it's in the tradition of Amy Holmes and Glenn Beck to find a conspiracy even when it comes to providing affordable health care for America.

Ultimately, what the president said was reiterating -- what President Clinton said reiterated what President Obama said several days ago in an interview with Chuck Todd of NBC. Clearly, there is a, obviously, growing tension amongst Democrats in the House and Senate over this issue, plus over the Web site not working effectively.

And there really has to be a change to the law either that -- the president says he can do administratively, but if he can't, then, clearly, the law has to be addressed so that the promise is kept. But I think the bigger issue here, John, is the hypocrisy we're seeing from the right wing, with their all of a sudden a commitment to make sure that everyone is insured.

When 14,000 people a day according to the Kaiser Institute was losing health care between 2008 and 2009, you didn't hear anything from the right wing about making sure Americans were receiving affordable health care. And when they controlled the House and Senate under the Bush administration, they did nothing about people with preexisting conditions or making sure people were able to stay on their insurance plans as they got older or perhaps got more ill.

So, it's important to put this entire debate into perspective.

BERMAN: I will put that to Amy in one second here.

But, Robert, to be fair, you're talking about hypocrisy. But a lot of people are talking about, including Bill Clinton, about a promise that Barack Obama made as a candidate and then made repeatedly as president and many members of Congress made when they were in the health care debate that if you had your insurance and you liked it, you could keep it and now they're finding out they can't. So-- ZIMMERMAN: That's correct. And it's a promise the president has to keep.

(CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: If I could add, we're finding out that the president knew back in 2010 that that promise was not going to be able to be kept and he kept repeating it over and over.

President Obama's own hometown newspaper "The Chicago Tribune" is accusing the president of either being vastly incompetent or a liar. I have to say I agree--

(CROSSTALK)

ZIMMERMAN: -- worth exploring here, Amy.

(CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: -- who said that the president of the United States, President Obama, was grossly, these are his words, grossly misleading the American public. Robert, you can try to shift the blame to the right wing.

(CROSSTALK)

ZIMMERMAN: But if someone has a junk health care policy, a health care policy that ultimately forces them to the emergency room--

(CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: They want to keep them.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Let Robert talk.

ZIMMERMAN: If someone has a health care policy that doesn't provide health care coverage, it's a junk policy, so when they go to the emergency room, the taxpayers are stuck with the bill for their health care, that has to be addressed.

The law does, in fact, require health care coverage that includes, you know, proper and full health care coverage for an American citizen. And I think that's the issue here. I don't think it was the president's intention to mislead. Ultimately, with the policy being implemented, that has to be corrected so everyone can keep their health care policy.

But the taxpayers also have to be protected and end the health care welfare state that we're hearing the right-wing advocate.

BERMAN: Let me jump in. Let me jump in. Amy, the president said he would like to perhaps explore some changes to the policy that might let people keep some aspects of their insurance or at least replace it. The Republicans in Congress have passed, what, 40-plus times, I lost count, efforts to derail, defund, delay, do away with Obamacare. There's no way that Republicans, at least history dictates, seem willing to work to make changes at this point, is there?

HOLMES: Well, in point of fact, Republican Congressman Fred Upton is introducing a bill, Dana Bash referred to it, that will be brought to the floor for a vote in the House at the end of the week which would allow people to keep their plans if they like them.

Whether that will work, in practical matter, that insurance companies can actually roll back these cancellations and reboot the old plan, that has yet to be seen. But this vote on Friday is going to be an X- ray, an X-ray, a political X-ray of those Democrats who find themselves in very vulnerable seats and Obamacare being basically a noose around their necks come 2014.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: We have to go.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Very quick, very quick, Robert.

BERMAN: OK. The Republican House and Senate has not agreed upon any plan--

HOLMES: Not unless I get to rebut it.

BERMAN: -- to provide health care for all Americans or keep people with preexisting conditions on their health care coverage. All they have done is advocated ending Medicare as we know it with a voucher system. That's their entire health care agenda.

BERMAN: This leaves us with a lot to talk about next time. I sincerely hope there will be a next time.

Amy Holmes, Robert Zimmerman, thank you so much. Really do appreciate it, guys.

(CROSSTALK)

SAMBOLIN: Great discussion.

Coming up, what is the tallest building in America? After a really big fight, experts today deciding between New York's One World Trade and Chicago's Willis Tower. You will hear how that big winner was chosen.

Plus, SeaWorld in court, fighting the ban on allowing trainers in the water just weeks after CNN aired "Blackfish." So, you will find out what happened.

BERMAN: And children hungry with nowhere to go. We're going to go live to the Philippines where survivors are running out of hope.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAMBOLIN: The tears in the Philippines are now coming not just from grief, but hunger. It has been four days since Super Typhoon Haiyan hit.

BERMAN: Four days since thousands have had a solid meal or clean drink of water. The nation now has more than two million people there in need of food; 800,000 people have been displaced out of their homes, about 2,400 people injured. Right now, officially, the count stands at 1,774 lives lost.

SAMBOLIN: And in the last hour, we have learned two Americans are among Haiyan's victims. Survivors spoke to the cameras. They are begging for food.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Our house got demolished. My father died after being hit by falling wooden debris. We are calling for your help. If possible, please bring us food. We don't have anything to eat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAMBOLIN: It's so difficult to watch.

Chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is joining us now.

Sanjay, you have reported from areas that have suffered from catastrophic situations that are very similar to this, Haiti, Japan, even Katrina, New Orleans.

What sort of health problems will the people of the Philippines be facing?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, as you're hearing there, and it is tough to watch and listen to, but the basics apply here, clean water, and it's a big challenge, obviously, trying to move this kind of water supply into an area that is so hard- hit, and also food in that order, water being the most important.

There are some decisions that get made. You want to try and get water there as quickly as possible, but is it a question, also, of creating larger footprints, if you will, in the area so you can start to desalinate water and make it more available for people overall even in the days and weeks to come?

So, those are the big ones. Infectious disease outbreak is always a concern, but, you know, having covered a lot of these stories, probably not as big of a concern as people think they're going to be. Usually, they can be pretty well-controlled, but the basics so important right now.

BERMAN: The basics hard to deliver, Sanjay, because the infrastructure is so affected, including hospitals. All the hospitals seem to have been destroyed or at least badly damaged here.

So, what does the international community do? What do aid workers to help fill this void?

GUPTA: I can't stress enough the importance of these assessment teams.

Let me put it to you like this. You will hear a lot of headlines over the next few hours and days about, OK, 50,000 pounds of food have now arrived in the Philippines, which is, obviously, very important, John. But even getting it from where it has arrived to a few hundred feet away where people need it can be a huge logistical challenge in terms of communication and in terms of the roads not being passable.

It's really quite challenge. We saw that, again, in Haiti. But, also, people focus a lot on various numbers in the aftermath. The numbers of people who have died is the one that always grabs people's attention. At the other end of the spectrum are the people who have lived and are doing OK, but it's that group in the middle, we will call them the vulnerable people, if you will. They're alive, but they're very vulnerable and over the next seven to 14 days, everything changes for them.

If they get those supplies, they go into the first category of the living. If they don't, they're at real risk of death. So, it's that vulnerable population that that is the number people probably need to focus the most on.

BERMAN: And let's hope that they get the help that they need, that there are not the bottlenecks, that the roads can open and the aid workers can get the help to the people who so badly need it.

SAMBOLIN: We see all of those children in particular, Sanjay, and their mothers begging for food or for milk or for whatever. It's really tough to watch.

Appreciate having you and your perspective. Thank you.

GUPTA: Thank you.

SAMBOLIN: So, in the aftermath of any natural disaster, children are among the most vulnerable as we were just talking about. It's been four days since Typhoon Haiyan roared ashore and the image, they are just chilling. Take a look at this, boys and girls and their families in a desperate struggle for survival.

Let me bring in Robert Laprade. He's the vice president of the Division of Humanitarian Response for Save the Children.

So, Bob, in the middle of all this devastation, why are the children especially in danger?

ROBERT LAPRADE, SAVE THE CHILDREN: Well, I think as Dr. Gupta just mentioned, they are the most vulnerable.

For one thing, they often are the first to succumb to diarrheal disease and other things that are waterborne. Really, we are trying to find the most vulnerable populations. We have teams, Save the Children has teams in several different places, in the (INAUDIBLE) in the midsection of the country.

And what we're doing is trying to find where those most vulnerable people are, so the most appropriate assistance can get to them like water, like health kits and medicines.

SAMBOLIN: OK, so, when you say appropriate assistance, you know, we're talking about the basics here. These are children who perhaps have not had water in four days, who have not had food in four days. What kind of conditions and how long could they really subsist under these conditions?

LAPRADE: Well, I think what we want to do is we want to create kind of the footprint, as has been described, where we not only hand out a few bottles of water right now, but we actually build it so we can meet the millions of people that need it right now, so, it's getting that logistics system in place so that we can bring in desalination- type things and we can bring in supplies to actually purify water and to tanker water in with trucks to a lot of these evacuation centers.

There are now 1,200 evacuation centers around the country and that is a lot of people that have been displaced and that fit in this vulnerable category.

SAMBOLIN: I know there is that immediate need, right, for food and for shelter, but as we were watching these images and we were listening to what the people are saying, these are people who have watched their loved ones swept away by water and they have experienced unimaginable loss.

So, what about the psychological needs, is that something you're addressing as well?

LAPRADE: Absolutely.

Save the Children is very focused on the emotional needs of children. We find that, you know, people are a little bit walking around in a daze right now and within a few days we really do have to start focusing on the other needs that are not just about the body, but we are really focused on those basic needs right now and it is what is most important to save children's lives.

SAMBOLIN: Well, we certainly wish you all the luck in the world. It's tough to see, you know, those little kids who perhaps lost their parents.

Robert Laprade, thank you so much for joining us.

LAPRADE: Thank you.

BERMAN: Coming up for us next, weeks after the film "Blackfish"

Well, we certainly wish you all the luck in the world. It's tough to see, you know, those little kids who perhaps lost their parents. Robert, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

Coming up for us next, weeks after the film black fish aired on CNN, SeaWorld fighting to put its trainers back in the water with its killer whales.

We will go live to this key court case in just a few minutes.

SAMBOLIN: But, next, a nurse exhausted from working a 12-hour shift falls asleep at the wheel on her way home and she dies in a car crash. Now her husband is suing the hospital where she worked. Does he have a case? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Welcome back, everyone. A Cincinnati man who lost his wife in a deadly car crash is now suing the woman's former employer. He blames them for what happened.

SAMBOLIN: Jim Jasper said the hospital where she worked as a nurse worked her to death with long hours and no breaks. Beth Jasper crashed her car last March while she was driving home after a 12-hour shift at Cincinnati's Jewish Hospital. The family believes she may have fallen asleep behind the wheel.

Mr. Jasper claims the hospital knew it was woefully understaffed and that his wife was extremely stressed and fatigued. In addition to seeking damages, Jasper says he wants the hospital to change its practices as well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM JASPER, HUSBAND OF BETH JASPER: It needs to change. These nurses cannot be treated this way. The patient care, you know, is an issue. But they can't continue to work these nurses and expect them to pick up the slack because they don't want to staff the hospitals.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAMBOLIN: So, the parent group of Jewish Hospital and Mercy Health Group says its heart goes out to the family, but it does not comment on pending litigation.

Here now to discuss this with us, CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Danny Cevallos and CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Sunny Hostin.

Thank you so much for joining us, guys.

Obviously, when you're talking about people who work at medical facilities, one of the big issue is the hours. You hear it all the time that these people are simply worked too hard. The question, Sunny, is in a case like this, how do you prove that the amount of work that they were doing in the hospital leads to a death? SUNNY HOSTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, John, are you sure you are not an attorney because that is the crucial issue here. Right? How do you prove the causal nexus, how do you prove that her not sleeping is the reason why she got into the accident?

But I got to tell you I wouldn't go so far as to say she has no case. I would never go so far as to say she can't prove or her family, rather, can't prove that because there is some precedent for it. Remember, I say in the years 2007, 2011, the Mayo Clinic did do a study on medical residents and their lack of sleep. And 11 percent reported that they got into car accidents.

I can tell you my own husband as a surgical resident got into car accidents because of the lack of sleep and that certainly did lead to a mandate where new residents, new doctors can't work for more than 16-hour shifts.

So, I think there's precedent for a case like this and I think it's time, far time that we need to treat our medical professionals more humanely because not only medical errors arise, death, death by car accident can arise.

SAMBOLIN: Danny, what Sunny is talking about are residents in particular, but when you talk about the entire population, the staff of the hospitals, is the hospital required to meet certain staffing levels? Do they have a case when it pertains to that?

DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, no, the hospital has a case because this entire complaint could get thrown out of court because what we called the worker's compensation bar.

This employee -- generally, employees can't see their employers for work-related injuries. There's a way around it, which is why this complaint, which I have reviewed, alleges an intentional act. But simply knowing that there was a risk of their employees being tired and an intentional act are different things.

And I don't know that the plaintiff has gotten by this bar. Now, they have noted some important pieces of evidence, which are that they held a meeting after this incident and employees of the hospital said they "dropped the ball," allegedly.

But even if they did, suing your employer is exceedingly difficult, getting over that threshold, and it's going to be difficult for this plaintiff to prove that the hospital intentionally caused her lack of sleep and overworked her. Simply put, I think the plaintiff in this case has an uphill battle.

SAMBOLIN: Yes, this is a tough one, you know, because there are so many people that are overworked, right, and so many places that are understaffed. We appreciate your perspective on this. Sunny Hostin and Danny Cevallos, thanks for joining us.

BERMAN: And coming up for us next, Sarah Palin sits down with CNN's Jake Tapper. I got to tell you, they talk about everything from Bill Clinton to Chris Christie's weight. Jake will join us live to give us the inside scoop about this interview and how it went down.

Also, CNN was inside the hearing in which SeaWorld was fighting the ban on allowing trainers in the water with killer whales. The question is, will this impact animal parks all across this country?

SAMBOLIN: And hear how this Harlem Globetrotter is doing after a really nasty accident on the court.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)