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Obama to Delay Obamacare 1 Year; Boehner Speaks on Obamacare Delay; Interview with Rep. Matt Cartwright

Aired November 14, 2013 - 11:30   ET

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

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: If they don't go into the risk pool of Obamacare -- the risk pool needs them in order to pay for the health care for the older, sicker people. You have to have that mixture in there. If they stay away for another year, there could be a real problem. So the question I think the insurance companies are going to raise is, what is this going to do to Obamacare in the long term? If we cooperate with you -- and that's a question I don't think we know the answer. Their inclination is that they don't have much of a choice, right?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The insurance companies have done very well by the Affordable Care Act.

BORGER: Right.

BLITZER: They're making a ton of money, but --

BORGER: If they do, how will this affect rates, for example, for 2015? Will rates increase? They believe, of course, they're going to get blamed for it. And has the administration done any, you know, financial risk mitigation, sort of run the numbers, if you will, to find out what the financial impact would be on the consumers who buy this policy or generally? And so I think that the president is going to say we need to do this. He doesn't want to do it through legislation, Wolf. If you do it through legislation, as some Democrats want, as Dana has been pointing out all day -- if you do it through legislation, you open the Pandora's Box. Then the Affordable Care Act could start unraveling legislatively on the floor of Congress. What you want to try to do is this kind of administrative fix. I think the big question mark here is the insurance companies.

BLITZER: How will they react? I suspect they will cooperate with the president, as they have throughout, because it's been good for their business.

BORGER: Don't forget the irony here. These are the insurance companies the president railed against daily as he was trying to get Obamacare passed. The insurance companies were the big, bad guys. Now the insurance companies are the people he's depending on to fix this.

BLITZER: Stand by for a moment.

We're only two moments away from the president walking into the briefing room to make this one-year delay key component of the Affordable Care Act announcement.

Elizabeth Cohen, our medical correspondent, has been watching all this.

Presumably, now, Elizabeth, let's say you're John Smith, you had a policy, you liked your policy, you wanted to keep the policy but you were told that policy no longer exists because it doesn't meet the requirements. It's noncompliant, as they say with, the Affordable Care Act. Now they're going to go back and say you can have your old policy, but we have to tell you, you're not going to get X, Y and Z, these lifetime benefits you would have gotten if you would have gone to the exchange and gotten a new policy. This will make matters a little complicated for a lot of folks out there.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: A little complicated? Wolf, I think people's heads will spin. Obamacare was complicated enough to begin with. Now to be said, we said you had to do this but now you don't have to do this but it may depend on which state you live in because different states have different laws about the implementation of Obamacare. It's going to make people so confused. Already, I'm getting e-mails from people I've been talking to over the past six weeks and they're already confused.

BLITZER: Hold on for a moment. Speaker John Boehner, the speaker, is speaking about this issue right now.

(BEGIN LIVE FEED)

REP. JOHN BOEHNER, (R-OH), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: -- more tax hikes for American families and employers, which will cost us more jobs and hurt our economy. Chairman Ryan, Senator McConnell and myself have all got clear, the president got his tax hike in January. So to borrow the president's own rhetoric, we're not going to ask the American people to pay ransom of higher taxes to enact common-sense policies that even the president has pushed for.

When it comes to Obamacare, it's clear that the American people simply can't trust this White House. The White House said Americans could trust them when they submitted their personal information, that the website was tested and was secure. Well, that hasn't happened. The website's security tests weren't finished before the launch and their personal information has, in fact, been compromised. President Obama promised the American people that their premiums would not go up. Instead, millions of Americans are seeing premiums go up and go up sharply. The president repeatedly promised, if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan, period. Well, now we know that that's not true. And the president and his team were well aware that they were misleading the country when they made this promise. So tomorrow, the president or the House will act on Mr. Upton's bill, the Keep Your Health Care Plan Act. The White House says it's looking for some administrative fix.

Of course, no one can identify anything the president could do administratively to keep his pledge that would be both legal and effective. A promise after promise from this administration has turned out to be not true. So when it comes to this health care law, the White House doesn't have much credibility.

Let's be clear, the only way to fully protect the American people is to scrap this law once and for all. There is no way to fix this. And while the two parties may disagree on that point, it shouldn't stop reasonable Democrats from working with us to keep the president's promise and give the American people the opportunity to keep the plan they have and the plan they like.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE QUESTION)

BOEHNER: I am highly skeptical that they can do this administratively. I just don't see, within the law, their ability to do that. That's why the House is going to move tomorrow. I would hope that the Senate would move quickly as well.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What is in there, the points that -- (INAUDIBLE QUESTION)

BOEHNER: Well, we'll see what the president has to say here in a few minutes. And then we'll have a better idea of exactly whether they can or can't.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mr. Speaker, you're scheduled to speak today and the speculation is that you're going to ask him not to move forward this year. Is that your position?

BOEHNER: No. Listen, we have these periodic meetings with the chairman about the issue of tax reform. We believe that tax reform would be good for our economy, would help produce more jobs and, frankly, higher wages. So this is an informational meeting to kind of see where they are. And I'm not -- I don't know what the outcome of the meeting is going to be. That's not the purpose of the meeting. You with all that gray hair on your face?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: More than 100,000 people have now gotten health insurance through Obamacare exchanges and tens of thousands have gone, taken advantage of the Medicaid expansion. How can you now -- how can you now get rid of the law if this many people have actually gotten their health insurance through it?

BOEHNER: Well, how about the millions of Americans who have lost their health insurance and the millions more who are going to lose their health insurance over the next year as the small business plan years come up and those policies are no longer available? You can't fix this government-run health care plan called Obamacare. It's going to destroy the best health care delivery system in the world. If you go back four or five months ago, the Budget Office said, even after this law is in effect for 10 years -- 10 years from now, there will still be 30 million Americans uninsured. That is not the promise that was made to the American people. It's just not fixable.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mr. Speaker, one of the big criticisms from Democrats is that you don't seem to do anything. As the year comes to an end, what would you say Republicans have to show?

BOEHNER: Listen, we've been trying to stay focused on the economy, trying to do those thing that is would help create a better economy. And whether it's stopping needless and burdensome regulations that are killing America or trying to fix a tax code that is so complicated that most Americans could never figure it out on their own, whether it's dealing with the farm bill, whether it's dealing with water projects, there's a lot that can be done.

Listen, we have a very divided country. We have a very divided government. I'm not going to sit here and underestimate the difficulty in finding the common ground because there's not as much common ground here as there used to be. But our job is to find that common ground and I intend to do it.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mr. Speaker, there's between $20 and $30 billion. Do you favor using that savings toward budget reduction or is it a separate issue? Do you think it's a separate issue and I've made that very clear to Chairman Ryan?

BOEHNER: I think it's a separate issue. I've made that very clear to Chairman Ryan.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Last week in the Senate, 10 Republicans joined the Democratic caucus on the Employment Discrimination Act. (INAUDIBLE QUESTION)

BOEHNER: I am opposed to discrimination of any kind, in the workplace and anyplace else. But I think this legislation that I have dealt with as chairman of the Education Workforce Committee, long before I was in the leadership, is unnecessary and would provide a basis for frivolous lawsuits. People are already protected in the workplace. I am opposed to continuing this.

Listen, I understand people have different opinions on this issue. And I respect those opinions. But as someone who has worked in this employment law area for all of my years in the state house and all of my years here, I see no basis or no need for this.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE QUESTION)

BOEHNER: There's a whole laundry list of issues that can yet be finished. I'm hopeful they will be.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Fair to say it will become an issue again if it makes it back here? There's been a lot more -- a lot more -- (INAUDIBLE QUESTION).

BOEHNER: I don't know that in the National Defense Authorization Bill that that issue ought to be dealt with. It ought to be dealt with on its own. This is a very -- it's an important issue. What the NSA does, protects the American people, protects, frankly, our allies around the world. Yes, I think there are changes that need to be made. But they need to be made in a very thoughtful way. Very.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mr. Speaker, Obama administration is encouraging Congress to hold off on sanctions on Iran. (INAUDIBLE QUESTION).

(END LIVE FEED)

BLITZER: So there's the speaker of the House, John Boehner, saying Obamacare, he says, there is no way to fix it. You can't fix it. You have to simply scrap this law. He says he will hear what the president has to say at his administrative announcement to try to fix at least one of the problems with the Affordable Care Act, but he is basically convinced that the only way to deal with this is to just get rid of the entire law right now. And there's legislation that's going to be on the House floor that Fred Upton, the Republican Congressman will introduce, presumably will pass. All the Republicans presumably will support it tomorrow, which the Democrats say will effectively scrap Obamacare if, in fact, that legislation is passed. It has to pass the House and then it has to pass the Senate, and the president would then have to sign it into law. Don't hold your breath for the president to sign it into law, even if it were to pass the United States Senate, which has a majority of Democrats.

Van Jones, the "Crossfire" co-host, former Democratic adviser to the president, is joining us right now.

I want to get reaction to what we heard from the speaker. He says you can't fix this. Just get rid of it.

VAN JONES, CO-HOST, CROSSFIRE: That's been the goal all along. Any opportunity to say that, they're going to say it.

But what's remarkable is what they're saying is that a program and idea based on the thinking of Richard Nixon, Newt Gingrich, the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney. Let not forget, Obamacare is Romney-care, a Republican idea. They're saying their own ideas don't work and they can't fix their own ideas. That's what's so remarkable here.

I think what you're seeing now is the president doing the right thing. He can survive a broken website. He cannot survive the perception of a broken promise. He is now stepping forward and saying, listen, if you want to keep these horrible, crappy, awful policies, you can do that. But I'm going to make sure that the insurance companies tell you exactly how bad these policies are. I think that's good for the president to do.

There's a missed opportunity now for Republicans. There should be a fix and upgrade Obamacare coalition that comes together. There are good Republicans who have very smart ideas about how to fix this thing. They're being drowned out by the negative naysayers. There are Democrats now whose ears are more open to fixes. There's a leadership moment here for both sides of the aisle to do what the American people want.

This is bigger than a broken website and bigger than the perception of a broken promise. We have a broken health care system. It was broken before Obamacare. People were being dumped and duped and denied before Obamacare. Democrats and Republicans were suffering under the last system. The problem has been Democrats have seemed indifferent to the suffering of people under the new system. Republicans seemed indifferent to the suffering of people under the old system. Both sets of leadership should come together and say, since both sides are willing to put fixes on the table, let's upgrade and fix Obamacare and stop the grandstanding. But you don't see that yet.

BLITZER: You certainly don't see any cooperation as far as Obamacare is concerned. The Republicans adamantly opposed. The Democrats, by and large, still --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Hold on, Van -- by and large, with the president, but there are a bunch of Democrats beginning to move away as well as we've seen in the last few days.

Stand by.

We're going to continue this. Van Jones will be with us, all of our correspondents and analysts.

You're looking at a live picture from the White House briefing room. Momentarily, the president will go in there. All those reporters that are standing up right now will sit down. The president will announce a one-year delay in the key component of the Affordable Care Act in order to honor a commitment he repeatedly made to the American people: If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.

Stand by. We'll be back in 60 seconds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. The president of the United States getting ready to make a dramatic announcement, telling the American people there will be a one-year delay in at least one key component of the Affordable Care Act in order to honor that commitment that he made to the American people, repeatedly: If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. He will try to fix what clearly was not working out well for him, well, for a lot of Americans, millions of Americans who were told by their insurance companies, you know, you might like these plans, but they're not compliant, they don't accept many of the conditions of the Affordable Care Act. As a result, go look for other insurance on the Affordable Care Act websites and there's been plenty of problems, as all of us know, with that website. We're waiting for the president.

Van Jones, co-host of "Crossfire," is with us. Will Cain is with us as well.

Van, quickly, when the president made that pledge, he repeatedly said, if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan, period. Period.

JONES: Yep.

BLITZER: Now, he's going to say, if you like your health care plan, you can keep that health care plan for one year, 2014. So that's not a period. JONES: It's not a period. And part of the challenge the president had was he made that statement and it was an absolute statement. There was no wiggle room in it. He didn't say, most of you or all of you. And then you're in a situation where literally you have one person that had a bad outcome, you look like you're a dishonest person. He has now got to fix that. He is fixing that. He's moving forward.

I think the challenge that you have now is that these plans that these people are clamoring to keep are sham plans. They're terrible plans. They are plans, you pay a bunch of money in, and then you can't get that money out and get dumped back out on the taxpayer. So we have to spend a year making sure people know how bad those plans are. That's not the same as keeping --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Let me interrupt, Van. You know there are a lot of folks who had said they aren't sham plans. They love those plans. They had people under those plans that were very ill. The insurance companies took very good care of them. They loved those plans. Some of those plans were sham plans if you will. But a lot of folks dumped by these plans say, you know what, they treated us well for years and we're really sorry we lost those plans.

JONES: Listen, I don't think anybody, not even the White House is now saying that we're going to take those plans away. We're trying to let people have those plans.

But there is, I think, an interesting moment here where now the Republican Party has become the party of Ralph Nader. The Republican Party is very interested in consumer protection and making sure that the insurance plans work for everybody, but in the past 20 years, where people have been getting duped and dumped and denied, we haven't heard anything from the Republican Party. So there's some political shell game that's going on here.

The president has to get out of this posture of sounding himself like an insurance guy, saying you didn't read the fine print. That is a horrible position for the president to be in. He has to get out of the posture. And he's got to get back on the march to be the reformer. You cannot be in a defensive crouch over a system that is not working, whether it's the old one or new one. He's got to get back on the march, saying, I was going to fix Obamacare, upgrade it and invite people in, insurance companies, Republicans and others to fix and upgrade Obamacare. Today is a pivot in that direction. He has to get away from this broken website and the perception of a broken promise and get on with fixing the broken system.

BLITZER: As we wait for the president -- and he should be walking into that briefing room, we're told, momentarily, Will Cain, you've got a different perspective than Van Jones. Go ahead and explain this point that Van and a lot of other Democrats supporters of the Affordable Care Act make that policies that have been canceled for, what, 10, 15 million Americans, these individual policies, were junk policy, sham policies, weren't worth the paper they were written on. WILL CAIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Listen, the yo-yo of arrogance involved in the entire reform effort from the beginning is just overwhelming at this point. It's apparent to the American people. You're telling them they're not competent enough to pick their own insurance plans, you know what's better than they do, you're telling what they can, changing it, what they can't keep, now what they can keep again. It's over and over. And the only thing driving this is the arrogant know-how from a group of people in Washington, D.C., that know better than you how to run your life.

Just to be clear, it's really worth understanding the policy here. You've heard Dana Bash talking to you, Wolf, you've had Gloria, who is sitting next to you, this fix is Obamacare slitting its own throat. You can't allow healthy people to opt out of Obamacare, to keep their own plans, because then Obamacare only becomes a pool for sick people. That is not how it was intended. It will be more expensive. There must be more subsidies. This is the end of Obamacare.

BLITZER: Will Cain, stand by for a moment.

Everyone stand by. We're waiting for the president.

Let's sneak in another quick break. Much more of the breaking news right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The president momentarily will go into the White House briefing room, make an announcement, one important element of the Affordable Care Act will be delayed in order to keep this commitment to the American people that if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. The president will go into specifics later. His aides will go into many more specifics, as they brief reporters and the American public.

Gloria Borger is here.

Gloria, this fix, as the president will call it, administrative fix, executive fix, no legislation required, will require cooperation from the insurance companies because they've canceled all of these plans. Now the president's saying un-cancel them, these folks like them, let them have them.

BORGER: First question we were talking about earlier was, does the president actually have the authority to do this? And I'm told that the president has what's called a lot of transitional authority, meaning that as you transition into the Affordable Care Act, the president does have some authority to say, look, if things aren't working well, we can change our road map a little bit.

BLITZER: They delayed the employer mandate for a year.

BORGER: Exactly. Exactly. So I believe the insurance companies, I'm told, believe that they have no choice, at this point, but to cooperate with the president. I'm sure they're not happy about it. They all believe, as do lots of people, this means that the law could well go into a death spiral because it changes the whole character of the risk pool, because the people who might renew those policies are the healthy, young people who have these -- many have these individual policies, and you'd rather them in the risk pool so that to help pay the bills for the older, unhealthy people who are going to go into that pool. So the insurance industry is skeptical. It's worried. It believes, in the end, this will result in increases in premiums that they're going to be blamed for. And, of course, Republicans will blame Democrats for it when they occur. But at this point, they believe they have no choice and that the president does have some authority to ask that this be done and so they'll cooperate.

BLITZER: We'll see if the president does it and if these insurance companies will cooperate.

BORGER: OK.

BLITZER: Hold for a moment.

We just heard the speaker of the House, John Boehner, says scrap the whole plan, you can't fix it, get rid of. Almost all the Republicans agree with him. The Democrats disagree. But there are voices among the Democrats beginning to waffle, shall we say.

Let's bring in Democratic Congressman Matt Cartwright from Pennsylvania.

Where do you stand, Congressman, on the issue going forward? Is it fixable or should the president just delay not only the one element of the Affordable Care Act but the whole thing?

REP. MATT CARTWRIGHT, (D), PENNSYLVANIA: Well, Wolf, you have to start from the backdrop. My district, where we have seen a downward spiral of the health care delivery industry, we've seen hospitals closing, rates spiraling up. Health care is broken in northeastern Pennsylvania, and that's why I support the Affordable Care Act. It is a shame that the website isn't working. It's unfortunate the president oversold that one piece of the plan. And I think that the fix that, as suggested now, is probably appropriate. It's certainly better than the Upton bill that would be coming up tomorrow. Upton bill is a huge overreaction to that problem. It seems like extending that question one year for the people who did have policies and wanted to keep them. That is a much better tailored answer to the problem at hand. If you support the Affordable Care Act --

BLITZER: I was going to say, Congressman, you think the president can do this without additional legislation?

CARTWRIGHT: I do. Obviously, insurance companies are not thrilled about it because it's going to change the equation. They're going to have to sharpen their pencils and go back to the drawing board. But they've done that before.

Look, we get back to what Governor Leavitt, from Utah, said when he was head of HHS and they were rolling out Medicare Part D. There were headaches. There were problems. There were terrible conundrums. People didn't understand the new situation. But in the end, it worked out and people loved it. And nobody remembers those headaches now. And Mr. Leavitt, Governor Leavitt, says these days openly, everybody take a deep breath, this is going to be a good thing in the long run. Don't get crazy about these speed bumps that we're hitting as we roll these things out.

BLITZER: Congressman Cartwright, Democrat of Pennsylvania, thanks very much for joining us.

CARTWRIGHT: You bet.

BLITZER: All right. We're standing by for the president. Once again, he's running a few minutes late. We'll get word from the president on this, what they're calling a temporary fix, one-year fix if you will, on his commitment if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. A one-year delay of at least one key component of that.

We'll squeeze in another quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back to the breaking news coverage we're following here in Washington.

I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting.