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Obamacare Delayed 1 Year; What Will Obamacare Delay Mean A Year from Now; Tom Hanks Remembers JFK Assassination.

Aired November 14, 2013 - 13:30   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Speaking of Bill Clinton, he made comments this week he thought the law should be changed in order for the pledge that the president had made, if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan, to be uphold. Did that force President Obama's hand today?

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The president said in the NBC interview with Chuck Todd he was going to find an administrative fix. The former president wasn't making any policy pronouncement, that he was critical of the president, that he was speaking tells you a lot. The Bush administration, Republicans didn't like a lot of things he was doing but kept their mouth shut out of loyalty to the president. When you have Bill Clinton, Dick Durbin and then lower-ranking Democrats -- but Bill Clinton, a former president, Dick Durbin, a member of the leadership, saying, have to face of the political reality, we have to change this law, when Democrats see the green light to speak out and criticize their president, criticize the White House, criticize his team, that tells you a lot about what they see is the political environment. If a president loses his party at this point in his second term, that spells trouble.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah.

TAPPER: Candy, there is a significant difference between saying, as Bill Clinton suggested and as the Landrieu bill would do, as Dana Bash pointed out, allow you to keep your health plan if you like your health plan in perpetuity, as opposed to for one more year.

CROWLEY: Exactly. And if your pledge was, if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan, period, the period is still there. I think that is where you're going to hear the Democrats saying, I think it ought to be for as long as they want it, as long as they can afford it, whatever it happens to be.

But, look, you know, the president is basically trying to strap on the wings at 50,000 feet here. And so the problem, to me, is that people are beginning not to trust the plane. And you look at the president's approval ratings, that's one thing. But the trust, that is what you use --

(CROSSTALK)

CROWLEY: -- that's -- it's always been what saved him. People liked, they trusted him, they thought he really had their needs in mind. And if that's what's at stake here -- and we're seeing it in polls as it goes done -- the 50,000-foot view is everything that comes up begins to undermine the plane.

TAPPER: That's maybe the most shocking number in that poll the other day.

CROWLEY: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: When people think you're not honest --

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: -- find him untrustworthy --

CROWLEY: Right.

TAPPER: -- than trust worry.

CROWLEY: Right. It's hard to put a plan that is changing this big a part of the economy into place -- and there's other things people will object to and he's going to have to sell it and it becomes more and more difficult every day.

TAPPER: All right, Candy and John.

The president offered an olive branch to people notified they'd lose their insurance, one more year. But what will that mean one year from now? We'll take a closer look, coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back.

CNN investigations has been taking a closer look at cancellations sent to millions of Americans. Yesterday, we told you that about a million people in California alone were told their insurance plans were going away. Those are the people the president was talking to today.

Let me bring back our investigations correspondent, Chris Frates, who brought us that report yesterday.

Chris, do we know how many of these notices have gone out?

CHRIS FRATES, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Jake, that's the million-dollar question. When I talk to insurance industry officials, they tell me there's no way of really knowing how many are going out or how many will go out in the future. That's largely because it's regulated by states. Each state has its own rules, laws, so there's no way to know across the country how many may be getting one in their mailboxes.

We talked about California. A million there will be canceled. When I talked to the California insurance commissioner yesterday, he said that was an estimate. And the way we arrived at the number was there's 1.9 million people in the individual market in California. And 800,000 of those people have plans that are grandfathered in. That means those plans aren't affected by Obamacare and people can keep those plans. By definition, there's 1.1 million people who will get canceled. He's unhappy about this. He thinks insurers should leave people on their plans. But under state law in California, he doesn't really have any power or legal authority to stop it.

TAPPER: Do we know what effect the president's announcement will have?

FRATES: We've seen the trade group that represents insurance companies come out and they said this could destabilize the market. There's a big fear among insurers that I talked that if the states take this too far, that there could be a hike in premiums, that they had priced in what, next year, was going to look like, and to change the rules now, might make things a bit unstable for consumers.

And they also say that they're looking at this as a political move. And they see that the administration is essentially trying to make the insurers the bad guys, again, to say, the president said the insurers could extend this a whole year, and it's the insurers choosing not to do it. Now they're the bad guys. And they feel very much like this is the old Obama play book that we saw during health care reform, of winning back the people by making the insurers the villains here.

TAPPER: Interesting.

And the president, of course, his move today, all that means is all of these cancellation notices, theoretically, will go out in a year.

FRATES: That's absolutely right. Insurers point out that that year will be October, 2014, right before the midterms.

(CROSSTALK)

FRATES: So terrible timing. That's why you have Senators like Mary Landrieu, who Dana Bash just talked to, trying to mitigate this. It could be a big risk come next year. They don't want to get snagged by Obamacare in their elections.

TAPPER: Right. Landrieu and five other Senate Democrats, pushing for a bill that would allow people to keep their plans in perpetuity, not just for a year. Chris Frates, thank you so much.

FRATES: Thank you.

TAPPER: Just ahead, get ready for a fiery exchange. Newt Gingrich and Van Jones, two of the hosts from CNN's "Crossfire," will join me to talk about the president's remarks. That's right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back.

After a botched rollout of the healthcare.gov website, an uproar over the cancellation of insurance plans, President Obama, earlier today, addressed the problems plaguing his Affordable Health Care Act just a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our working assumption way -- my working assumption was that the majority of those folks would find better policies at lower costs or the same costs in the marketplaces, and that the universe of folks who potentially would not find a better deal in the marketplaces, the grandfather clause would work sufficiently for them, and it didn't. And again, that's on us, which is why we're -- that's on me. And that's why I'm trying to fix it. As I said earlier -- I guess last week, and I will repeat -- that's something I deeply regret because it's scary getting a cancellation notice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Two of the hosts of CNN's "Crossfire," Van Jones and Newt Gingrich, join me now.

Gentlemen, thanks for being here.

The president says he fumbled the rollout. Is this a turning point for the White House -- Van?

VAN JONES, CO-HOST, CROSSFIRE & FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR: I think so. We'll get into whether it's legal and handled properly, whatever. But the first thing that you see today is Obama, the lawyer, is gone. Obama, the leader, is back. He's not trying to say, look, what I said was this and I meant was that, and try to lawyer-up his responses. That's gone. He said, it's on me, we fumbled this, we're going to work to fix it. That's the first thing he's got to do to restore credibility and get some momentum going. I thought it was good.

I also thought it was very interesting to see the response earlier of Boehner, who could have said, listen, the president's coming forward, he wants to fix this, I'm going to meet this president and we're going to try to fix this thing, saying, you have to give up and scrap the whole thing. So you have a president saying these are fixable and you have Boehner throwing in the towel, not meeting the president to solve the problem.

TAPPER: Speaker Gingrich?

NEWT GINGRICH, CO-HOST, CROSSFIRE & FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Well, first of all, "Saturday Night Live" will not be able to do justice to this. This is an absurdity. This is the president of the United States behaving as though he's a dictator, saying, in effect, he's going to waive the law, not ask the Congress to change the law. He's going to announce, all of you insurance companies trust me. Now, I was wrong about the website and I was wrong about you losing your plans, but this time, trust me, we won't prosecute if you break the law.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Does he have the executive authority to do this? GINGRICH: I think the idea you're going to establish a nationwide policy, based on non-prosecution while you ask people to break the law, guarantees so many lawsuits. Every trial lawyer in the country's going to be watching this.

JONES: I don't -- I don't think that's exactly right. I think that the president does have transitional authority to implement this program. He's already done it with the business community. There have been exceptions.

Here what happens, I think, is remarkable. Whatever this president does, the Republicans kick it. They think his name is Barack Pinata Obama. When he's standing back, not showing leadership, they say he's arrogant. He steps forward, now he's abusing his authorities. No matter what happens, this party will not work with the president.

GINGRICH: The president didn't say, why don't you all come down, let's fix it together. He held one more press conference to explain one more brilliant move. At the same time, the president didn't bring in the insurance companies to say, guys, how can you physically do this? There two things going on here. Senator Landrieu, a Democrat, immediately said after this, she's moving forward. She doesn't buy this. So you have a Democratic Senator, not a Republican, a Democrat saying it. And the insurance companies promptly said, this is totally unworkable.

JONES: Let me point out a few -- the word "absurd" is one of your favorite words. Let me point out some absurdities here. When the president was meeting with insurance companies, you and others said he was having secret meetings.

GINGRICH: He was.

(LAUGHTER)

JONES: When he meets with insurance companies, he's wrong. When he doesn't meet with them, he's wrong.

GINGRICH: He could meet with them in public. I know this is a radical idea.

(LAUGHTER)

He could have brought them in public and said, is there a way to work through the problem.

JONES: Here's what I think the viewers need to be keyed in on. These problems are small and fixable. And the president's moving forward to fix them. The Republicans could help, but instead they're grandstanding and demagoguing. And that's part of the problem. The president --

GINGRICH: Wait a second. A million people in California getting a cancellation is not a small problem. If you're -- you're the guy who is normally compassionate.

(LAUGHTER)

If you're one of those families that's getting this letter, this is not a small problem.

(CROSSTALK)

JONES: I've got friends in California who've gotten some of the letters. I've been a Democrat pushing the president and pushing the administration do something. Now they're doing something, I'm going to stop kicking and say, let's get behind this guy and try to fix it.

I've got one just more observation about this entire process. You know, when you have a law that gets passed -- and I challenge you -- when was last time we passed a perfect law? You didn't pass any perfect laws.

(CROSSTALK)

JONES: You had to bow back and fix laws, welfare laws, Medicare Part D. We didn't pretend the republic was collapsing. We fixed Medicare Part D. I don't understand why --

(CROSSTALK)

GINGRICH: Van, wait a second. Wait a second. The gap between the defense of a perfect law and this fiasco, I mean, even with your Yale Law School training, this is a hard thing to take to the jury and go, you know, when the entire railroad came through your front yard, it was a visit, you shouldn't take it personally.

JONES: I have said it's a tough thing. But I think I'm disappointed, I think a lot of people are disappointed. When Medicare Part D was initially a train wreck, Democrats voted against it. But --

(CROSSTALK)

GINGRICH: It wasn't a train wreck.

JONES: Why don't you tell your people to come help fix it?

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: We only a minute left.

Doesn't he have a point -- I've been talking for last hour about --

(LAUGHTER)

-- how people criticizing the president -- has a point. So in fairness, doesn't he have a point in that Republicans could do more to step in and try to fix this?

GINGRICH: They are on Friday. You're going to see Fred Upton bring a bill to the floor that's a serious fix. You can agree or disagree. A serious fix. I suspect you'll see Republicans in the Senate trying to find a way to reach a compromise with Landrieu to get a serious fix. But what nobody in the Congress is going to say is that president of the United States has power arbitrarily to decide which laws to enforce and -- that's not the rule of law.

(CROSSTALK)

GINGRICH: That would be the rule of personality.

JONES: Let me talk about what the president has done wrong and what he's doing right. You had a broken website. You have the broken promise. Those are bad. He's trying to deal with that, but he hasn't taken his eye off the ball of fixing the broken health care system. The most important thing is, the health care system was broken before, they're trying to improve it now. He's continuing to be a reforming, trying to fix and upgrade Obamacare. He's doing that starting today, and I'm proud of him.

TAPPER: All right, Newt Gingrich, Van Jones, thank you so much.

Don't miss more of these guys on "Crossfire" tonight. Joining them, Congressman Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana, versus Congressman Raul Grijalva, Democrat from Arizona, 6:30 eastern, 3:30 pacific, only on CNN.

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his death is still a haunting mystery 50 years later. Coming up, our interview with Tom Hanks, the co-producer of a new CNN documentary about JFK.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back.

A time of revolution in the streets with young people demanding change. I'm talking about the U.S. during the 1960s. It was quite a time with the civil rights movement in full force and a raging Vietnam War. We are marking 50 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Our new film, "The '60s, The JFK Assassination" premiers tonight.

Actor Tom Hanks is one of the film's executive producers. Hanks was just a boy when Kennedy was killed. He remembers his teacher breaking down into tears when the news was announced.

Here, Hanks tells our Christiane Amanpour more about that horrible day.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM HANKS, ACTOR & PRODUCER: I remember thinking this doesn't happen in the real world. A president doesn't get shot in front of everybody the way John F. Kennedy was. Now, at 7 years old, I was barely even a socially conscious being, but the overwhelming sadness of every adult I came across was rattling.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: What will the film show us? HANKS: Well, the stuff we're doing for CNN is really taking how television covered these great moments, both of history and sort of like society, everything from news reports to like the British invasion of rock bands. And it's how this medium that was really just coming into its first great technological muscles, and how it now looks so incredibly primitive that we almost wonder how we hung so much importance on the truth that television told us, when really it was dictated by copper wire and innuendo almost.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: We'll look at new insights from the day JFK was shot and killed, and see how the world has changed. You won't want to miss our special premiere of "The '60s, The JFK Assassination." That's tonight at 9:00 eastern, 6:00 pacific.

That's it for me. I'll be back at 4:00 eastern, 1:00 pacific, on "The Lead."

NEWSROOM continues with Zoraida Sambolin and John Berman right after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)