MSNBC "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" - Transcript

Interview

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O"DONNELL: Joining me now, as promised, Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Finance Committee and its subcommittee on health care.

Good evening, senator.

SEN. RON WYDEN ®, OREGON: Thank you, Larry. Good to be with you.

O"DONNELL: Senator, we"ll get to your bipartisan amendments in a moment, but give us your reading about where things stand as of now in the Senate. What have you heard about the Harry Reid"s negotiations on this compromise package that we don"t quite know the details of yet?

WYDEN: Larry, Harry Reid wants to make sure we get this right. We know that the lobbyists are everywhere. The fact of the matter is, they have been trying to kill the public option for months and months. They want to hollow it out. The insurance company lobbyists would like to turn the public option--that"s what they"ve been trying to do, into a weak-kneed nothing burger that more than 90 percent of the country wouldn"t be able to get.

So, what Harry Reid is doing now is trying to make sure that the policy is sound, we"ve got the details, we"ve got the numbers to back it up, because he knows that when he gets that report from the Congressional Budget Office, the lobbyists are going to be doing everything they can to try to kill real reform. We"re going to push back.

O"DONNELL: Now, Senator, would you view an expansion of Medicare down to age 55 as something that is substitutable for a public option?

WYDEN: Larry, what I can tell you is a properly put together program that helps folks between 55 and 64 could just be a Godsend.

A lot of those folks come to my town hall meetings. They say they"re just hanging by their fingernails, waiting to get Medicare when they"re 65. In a lot of instances, they"ve been hit by these tough economic policies, they face layoffs, they face tremendous discrimination by insurance companies in the marketplace.

And you bet that well-put together program for folks between 55 and 64 could be a real Godsend.

O"DONNELL: Now, Senator, as the bill is being scored by CBO, it seems that health care reform has hit a stall on the Senate floor. You"ve technically moved off of it onto the appropriations bills and you"ll go back apparently to health care reform next week.

Are you worried about losing momentum, waiting for that CBO score, moving off to different legislation, trying to get votes on different legislation in the meantime?

WYDEN: Certainly, the lobbyists and the obstructionists are going to do everything they can to try to hold this up. But Senator Reid is going to be relentless in pushing this forward. We do have other matters that are critical. The second we get that Congressional Budget Office score, we"re going to have all the members of the caucus have a chance to review it, get into the details. These are critical issues.

We also face the question, for example, about making sure you have hardball insurance reforms because--let"s say somebody is 52 years old. Those folks could be hit very hard as well in the days ahead. We want to make sure there"s real reform for them. We don"t want to just say we"re going to keep the present system of discriminatory insurance practices and call it reform.

O"DONNELL: Senator, you"re not afraid of showing--letting the lobbyists see your bipartisan amendments. Tell us what you and Susan Collins have come up with.

WYDEN: Susan Collins and I are going to try in a bipartisan way to make sure that there are some tools to hold these premiums down for working families. For a single mom, those folks between Portland, Oregon, and Portland, Maine, just are facing some very significant rate hikes.

Now, we"ve taken some steps in this bill that the budget office says are going to hold their premiums down, we ought to be doing more. The best way to do it, to hold insurance companies accountable, is to offer more choice and more competition.

That"s what Susan Collins and I are doing. We"re saying, for example, that employers who are in the exchange--that"s the market place--if the employer voluntarily wants to offer more choices to their worker, they could do it and that"ll hold premiums down.

O"DONNELL: Senator, 14 shopping days until Christmas. A couple of those days on the Senate floor will be used for appropriations and the debt ceiling. No way to get this done before Christmas Eve, right?

WYDEN: I don"t buy that. Senator Reid has said that he is going to keep us at this just until we get the public interest done. Americans are hurting right now. We"ve got to get this addressed and hold down health care costs.

O"DONNELL: Senator Ron Wyden, the optimist from Oregon, we appreciate your time tonight, sir.

WYDEN: Thank you.

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