 | | Sunday, December 20, 2009 | |
| TODAY ON THE SUNDAY TALK SHOWS | | Axelrod defends Senate health bill from the Left and Right | |
| ABC: THIS WEEK | |
+];tile=2;ord=12345?) Axelrod: Dean is wrong about health bill
Senior White House adviser David Axelrod defended the Senate's health-care reform bill, saying that while the legislation is not perfect, Democrats in Congress are on the verge of enacting monumental legislation for all Americans.
"I think when people see what actually happens after these reforms are passed, those concerns are going to be allayed, and they're going to realize that if they have insurance, they're more secure in their relationship with their insurance company, their costs are going to go down," Axelrod said on ABC's "This Week."
Axelrod, who called Dean's call to defeat the Senate bill "insane" this past week, said Dean is mistaken if he believes this version of reform is a sell out by Obama and more moderate Senate Democrats.
"Governor Dean's main concern was that he called this a giveaway to the insurance company, but his facts were wrong," Axelrod said. "The fact is that this bill, for the first time, prohibits insurance companies from spending excessive amounts of money on CEO salaries.... We're going to have competition within these health insurance exchanges ... every American is going to have greater leverage with their insurance company."
"We found what the price of that was as we began to read the bill that we've now had for less than 24 hours, when the senator from Nebraska on page 98 of the bill gets his state specifically exempted from having to pay the increased Medicaid costs associated with bill," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said.
Nelson was also lambasted by conservatives for compromising on his prior stance on an abortion provision in the bill. Nelson finally accepted a deal where states can decide to opt out of allowing insurance plans to cover abortion in the bill's established insurance exchanges.
Kyl said the state opt-out won't stop tax money from going to abortion coverage.
"If your state opts out, you're still paying the taxes that will support the subsidies for those who do buy abortion coverage, and that breaks a deal that we've had for a long time," he said.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) disagreed, pointing to separate payments the coverage will demand.
"What we agreed to yesterday, with Senator Nelson, is a clear allocation where those who buy an insurance policy with abortion coverage who also receive a federal tax credit will be required to make a separate payment each month, so it's clear delineation," Durbin said. "No federal funds will be used, as we've said under the Hyde amendment, for paying for abortion, clear delineation."
When asked how a final bill will impact his party when most of the main reform provisions won't go into effect for years, Axelrod said he believes voters will see the merits of what's been set up by Democrats.
"The day the president signs the bill, children with pre-existing conditions will now be -- an insurance company can't keep them from joining their parents' insurance policy," Axelrod said. "People with pre-existing conditions will have a catastrophic plan they can join ... not to mention, we'll begin reducing that gap in Medicare prescription coverage."
| | NBC: MEET THE PRESS | |
Axelrod, Dean diverge on Senate bill's value In the face of strong resistance from progressives in the Democratic Party, White House adviser David Axelrod insisted the Senate's health-care reform bill is a landmark step for patients' rights and not a sell-out of Obama's campaign promises.
"This adheres to the key principles that the president set," Axelrod said. "It's going to bring more security to people who, who have insurance today in relation to their insurance companies, it'll reduce their costs over time as well. It's going to help people who don't have insurance, including small businesses who can't afford it."
Progressives in the Democratic Party, including Howard Dean, have recently pushed against the White House's assertion that the final Senate bill will have a significant impact on the health insurance industry's grip on access to care and rising premiums. Dean said progressives have given ground after numerous campaign promises from the Obama administration that reform would bring some kind of public option, no individual mandates and access to imported prescription drugs -- all areas where Obama has changed course over the past year.
"We've given an enormous amount of compromise" but the Senate's bill sets America on a course where the private insurance industry is the only way to achieve universal coverage, Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on "Meet the Press."
Dean believes the House's version of reform is much more preferable, but in the "scramble" to win votes for the Senate's legislation, Democrats stripped out any real choice for Americans. Without a public option -- which the House version includes -- Democrats have now set up an unpalatable 30-year fight with private insurers, Dean said, voicing his continued opposition to the Senate's plan.
Axelrod, who called Dean's call to defeat the Senate bill "insane" this past week, said Dean is mistaken if he believes this version of reform is a sell out by Obama and more moderate Senate Democrats.
"He (Dean) just wasn't familiar with some of the aspects of this legislation," said Axelrod, who also stressed his respect for Dean's record on health care.
Axelrod further defended the administration against progressive critics, saying no legislation is passed without compromise and that Obama supports a public option, but he is only a small part of the reform effort.
"No major piece of legislation that's ever been passed in this country ... that doesn't include compromise," he said. "That's the legislative process. But the question is, in the main, does it achieve what we wanted to achieve? It's not perfect. And over time it may be improved, as all legislation is."
Axelrod insisted that Americans will realize that the bill is a positive force for them, and that by the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats should see a "good result." Dean said if the Senate version is passed, he sees some rough elections ahead for Democrats.
"If this bill doesn't go into effect" until 2014, it will be difficult to sell, he said.
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| CNN: STATE OF THE UNION | |
Axelrod defends Senate health bill Senior White House adviser David Axelrod defended the Senate's version of health-care reform Sunday, saying the legislation, while not perfect, represents a major step for all Americans.
"I think there is a will to get this done," he said. "People understand we're on the doorstep of doing something really historic that will help the American people and strengthen our country for the long run."
Axelrod defended deals cut with certain senators in exchange for their support of the bill. For instance, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) was assured significant federal assistance for his state's Medicaid program.
"I think every senator uses whatever leverage they have to help their states," Axelrod said on CNN's "State of the Union," defending Obama's promises of a new tenor and era of transparency in Washington. "That's the way it has been. That's the way it will always be.... The change is that we are fighting an insurance industry that has killed health reform for generations."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was upset with Nelson for accepting a deal on abortion coverage in the bill, in which states can decide to opt out of allowing insurance plans to cover abortion in established insurance exchanges.
"He (Nelson) took up the challenge of the pro-life community," Graham said. "He became their standard-bearer. And he said, 'I will not let this bill leave the Senate.' And he negotiated a compromise that no pro-life group believes works."
Axelrod defended the backtrack by President Obama on his campaign platform of allowing the re-importation of drugs, saying the White House isn't done with the issue despite reports that it actively lobbied against the provision in the Senate bill.
"The president supports ... safe re-importation of drugs into this country," he said. "The president is committed to moving forward once we resolve the issues that the FDA has. That's his responsibility, to protect the American people."
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| CBS: FACE THE NATION | |
Senators disagree on bill's timetable
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) lamented the pace of health reform in the Senate all "for a bill that doesn't become implemented until 2014" and that has been treated as if it were an end-of-the-year appropriations bill.
"I said to the president and I said to the Senate majority leader and others, please, give us the time; come back after the new year; get together," Snowe said. "This is a generational issue that has substantial effects with -- in fact, I would say sweeping effects because you're recalculating one- sixth of our economy."
On the abortion compromise in the legislation, Snowe supported the "status quo, making sure that we're not using any federal funds to finance abortion," but said she's disappointed in how the provision was handled in the Senate.
"I think it's regrettable that it's reached this point with respect to this issue because, clearly, what is in the current legislation should have satisfied those concerns," Snowe said. "It was every attempt to write it as it is in existing law that would not use any federal funds to finance abortion."
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) echoed his fellow Republican Snowe, saying the pace of action in the Senate is indicative of the merits of the bill.
"There's a reason why we're voting on it in the middle of the night," Alexander said of the cloture vote scheduled for 1:00 a.m. ET Monday morning. "We just learned about it yesterday. They're trying to push it through before Christmas. There's a lot of explaining to do."
Sen. Mary Landrieu countered Alexander, saying the only reason for such a late vote was Republicans' stall tactics.
"There's only one reason we're going to be here until Christmas, and that's Senator Tom Coburn," Landrieu said. "We don't have to vote in the middle of the night. But he's the one making us do it, not Harry Reid, not the Democrats. It is a Republican obstructionist that is making us vote in the middle of the night."
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) piled on Alexander, saying that at least Democrats were trying to pay for the bill as opposed to Republican action on Medicare during George W. Bush's first term.
"In 2003, when the insurance companies and the drug companies and President Bush pushed through the Medicare privatization bill ... they were not paying for it in any way," Brown said. "We are paying for this bill. The Congressional Budget Office says ... in the next 20 years, it will be a $1.4 trillion paydown of the national debt."
| | FOX NEWS SUNDAY | |
McCain signals GOP can't do much to stop reform Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) agreed that there was "probably not" much Republicans can do to stop health-care reform from passing the Senate by Christmas Eve.
"We will fight until the last vote," McCain said. "We owe that to our constituents ... we must do everything. We must look back and say, 'We did everything we can to prevent this terrible mistake from taking place.'"
The former Republican presidential candidate said the bill's savings reported by the Congressional Budget Office, to the tune of $130 billion in the first decade and around $1.3 trillion over the next, are only the result of suspect budgeting and major cuts to Medicare.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) disagreed, saying the CBO estimate will significantly bend the cost curve in the second decade, a goal of Senate Democrats and Obama alike.
"With respect to bending the cost curve, CBO says in the second 10 years it does bend the cost curve -- in the first 10 years very modest increase, but you'd expect that when you cover 30 million more people," Conrad said.
Conrad countered critics of the deal Sen. Nelson struck for his state in exchange for his vote, saying the compromise is common for all senators of all states.
"My state along with the other frontier states, five in number, get an increase in their Medicare levels of reimbursement because we're the lowest states in the country," he said. "And that doesn't offend me at all. It's, in fact, fair."
McCain called Obama's attempt at striking a deal on climate change a failure.
"I think that the fact it has no binding provisions to it whatsoever is a rhetorical attempt to cover up what was obviously a serious failure," he said.
By John Amick | |
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1 التعليقات:
Axelrod is as evil as Karl Rove.
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