NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript - Affordable Care Act

Interview

DAVID GREGORY:
And good Sunday morning. A big weekend for the future of President Obama's landmark health care legislation. Two months to the day since the troubled launch of HealthCare.gov, the White House now says, in a report that it just put out this morning, that it has made dramatic progress, and that the team is operating with, quote, "Private sector velocity and effectiveness." That's how the website is apparently working.

A report just released this morning, as I say, also says the site's capacity has been expanded to handle 50,000 users at once, along with improved response times and decreased error rates. But the Obama administration has downplayed expectations during the past week, saying that demand could actually outweigh capacity. And today's report indicates that there's still more work to be done.

The real test lies ahead, when millions of uninsured Americans could try to enroll by an initial December 23rd signup deadline. Joining me now, two leading voices on Capitol Hill in the health care debate, Democratic Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, ranking member of the House Budget Committee, and Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan. In addition to chairing the Intelligence Committee, he also sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, with jurisdiction over the Department of Health and Human Services. Gentlemen, welcome to both of you, and welcome to Meet the Press.

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
Good to be here.

DAVID GREGORY:
Chairman Rogers, let me start with you. Maybe a little bit of a delay. Just your reaction to this report, "Dramatic progress, private sector-like velocity." The promise was for the website to be fully functioning by now. Are you satisfied?

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
Oh no, completely not. I mean well overstated. I mean have they made some progress? Yes. They brought in some private sector folks-- to try to get the functionality up. It still doesn't function right. Matter of fact, their own CIO said that he believed that if they had the ability to get up to 80% functionality, that would be a good day for them.

So A) the functionality is right. But here's the most important part of this discussion, that nobody talks about, the security of this site and the private information does not meet even the minimal standards of the private sector. And that concerns me. I don't care if you're for it or against it, Republican or Democrat, we should not tolerate the sheer level of incompetence securing this site. And remember how much personal information is not only there, but all of the sites that the hub accesses would expose Americans' personal information in a way that is breathtakingly bad.

DAVID GREGORY:
Okay. Congressman Van Hollen, the claims being what they are today still indicate a truth. A Washington Post editorial points it out this morning, that, while progress has been made, the site is still not, today, where it was supposed to be two months ago. And yet, the promise is to be fully functioning. Are you satisfied?

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
Well David, the administration has hit the big benchmarks they set out, right? 50,000 people at one time, 800,000 people a day. Look, this is going to take some time before it's up and kicking in full gear. I think what we have to look at is those states where you have well functioning web-sites, like California, like New York, like Kentucky. All of them are signing people up. All of them have a good mix of people.

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
But you have a patchwork -- your own state site is not functioning very well.

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
Oregon was off to a great start--

(OVERTALK)

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
David, Maryland's a mess, there's no doubt about it. The question is, are we going to work together to fix these problems? And there will be additional problems. Or are we going to do what our Republican colleagues want to do, continue just to try and sabotage the entire effort, even though they don't have an alternative? Yes, we have to fix it. We should be working together to fix it every day so it gets better.

DAVID GREGORY:
So let me pick up on that.

(OVERTALK)

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
But the underlying concept is good. That's why I think you have to-- California--

DAVID GREGORY:
My reporting, Congressman Rogers, indicates that this is also where the President's going to go. He's going to go on the offensive. He's going to argue that Republicans are trying to sabotage this instead of getting it right, that they've got no real ideas of their own. Is that what's going to actually make some improvements here to get this helping people?

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
No. You have to remember what happened. This is unprecedented confiscation of people's health care. And so here's what I think they're missing. They're trying to make this a political fight. When you have somebody who just lost their insurance, and by the way, there are millions of people who got cancellation notices. And the next go-round on the business side is 80 to 100 million people will get cancellation notices.

And let me tell you why I think they're missing the boat on this, trying to make this a political fight between Democrats and Republicans. A guy grabbed me the other day, whose wife is expecting a baby at the end of December. They've got a cancellation notice. If she has the baby in January, he is absolutely apoplectic about how he pays for it. If she has the baby in December, that-- there's no compassion in that.

And this is happening hundreds of thousands of times all across the country. They're getting ready to close high-risk pools that have cancer survivors, people who are trying to fight cancer are getting thrown out of their high-risk pool at the end of this year. And as a cancer survivor--

(OVERTALK)

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
--you want your whole focus being on beating the disease.

DAVID GREGORY:
All right, but there's enough--

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
They're making a horrible mistake by trying to--

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
You're talking about--

(OVERTALK)

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
--trying to make this political--

DAVID GREGORY:
You talk about confiscation--

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
Real people are getting hurt by this.

DAVID GREGORY:
The reality is there's also a lot of people who are going to have the potential to get insurance who never had insurance. And you have a small piece of the market where people may lose plans. Many of those will get better plans in the individual market.

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
The insurance companies recognize those are there. Let me get to a bottom line question, though. You made your argument.

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
Here's a bottom line question, which goes to will this be fixed? Look at this poll from CNN/ORC back in the November 18th to the 20th. Will current problems faced in the new health care law by solved? 54% do believe that it will be solved. That's a level of credibility and belief in the system that presumably is very important. But let me ask you, Congressman Van Hollen.

We have seen delays kind of in the still of the night. Here are some of the headlines. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, now saying that small businesses will have extra time before they can actually start signing up for health care benefits. Should the individual mandate be delayed? This is the big part of health care. Should that be delayed, if you want all of this to work as well as it can?

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
David, as you know, they've already moved the deadline twice. They moved it to the end of March for the individual mandate. We've extended the period until December 23rd for people to sign up. Let's see how this is working. The answer to your question is we need to adapt. We need to make sure we address problems as they come up and try and work with them on a bipartisan basis.

You know, Mike says it's not political. I have in my pocket right here, Eric Cantor, the Republican whip, issued this called "playbook" against Obamacare the other day. They are not trying to work with us to try and address these issues. Yes, there are problems. There's no denying that. Let's work to fix them. We know what it looks like when they're fixed. It looks like California, it looks like New York, it looks like Kentucky.

DAVID GREGORY:
But you're not saying it's a Republican's job to execute, right? Because these were the federal government's idea, this President's idea, and it's his responsible to execute. The federal government's responsibility to execute.

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
No doubt about that. You've got a lot of groups out there running ads, telling young people not to sign up. You have efforts to interfere with the navigators, people who are trying to get more Americans to sign up. When we had the prescription drug bill, there were lots of problems. We didn't think it was the greatest bill the way it was originally designed. But Democrats worked with Republicans--

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
--encourage seniors. I've done the research.

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
He did not encourage people to sign up.

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
--worked with us to get the job done. And that's--

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
Should the individual mandate be delayed, if that's what it takes to get the program right?

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
Well, as of today, no. But, you know, you obviously, if you can't sign up. But right now, we're making progress. Looks like people will be--

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
Congressman Rogers, same question to you. It's really important whether the individual mandates should be delayed, along with some other things.

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
Yeah. Well, first of all, you're punishing these people. You know, the number one reason people didn't have insurance was cost. What this has done is increased cost. So again, they have been making it political. Matter of fact, they tried to get people to talk about politics at the Thanksgiving table by talking about the President's health care law. And at their own family table. If that isn't political, I don't know what is.

Here's the problem. You have 15% of the population didn't have health insurance when this started, roughly. And we think that number was high. We think it was closer to ten. So what they've done is disrupted it for the 85% that had health care. And their costs are going up significantly. So we've broken the system to help a few.

Nobody would fix a problem that way. And think of the people who are going through all of the anguish today for getting that pink slip on their medical insurance, who have cancer, who have a wife that's pregnant. Those folks are absolutely apoplectic. And so I think--

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
David, look.

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
--this is crazy that we're saying, "Well, if we just tweak it a little bit, we're going to take care of their problem."

DAVID GREGORY:
All right.

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
These are real-life problems. And these folks are already having a hard time in this economy. And their health care insurance--

DAVID GREGORY:
I'm going to--

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
--is going up, and they've got to figure out how to get it.

DAVID GREGORY:
I'm going to leave the debate there. There are a lot more to--

(OVERTALK)

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
--so much misinformation in two seconds that--

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
All right, quick respond.

(OVERTALK)

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
The reality is it hasn't messed up 80% of the market. The individual market, which has always been broken, represents about 5% of the market. A lot of the people were losing their health care on an annual basis before. We're trying to fix that.

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
That's not true.

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
There are some imperfections in the--

(OVERTALK)

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
That just simply isn't true.

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
All the information about compromising your personal data--

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
80 million people--

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
--one of the great things about the Affordable Care is you--

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
--are going to get pink slips.

DAVID GREGORY:
All right--

(OVERTALK)

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
--were not dealing with--

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
--their own estimate--

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN:
--preexisting conditions.

REP. MIKE ROGERS:
--80 million people--
(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
All right, we're not going to settle this here and now. We're out of time. But obviously, this gives you some indication to our viewers about where this debate is and how political it will remain as we move ahead, perhaps, into the new year. Congressmen, both of you, Chairman Rogers, Congressman Van Hollen, thank you both very much.

Let's get more of a reality check. I want to turn now to Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who is a former health policy advisor to President Obama, now professor at The University of Pennsylvania, and also here is editor of The Washington Post Wonkblog, Ezra Klein, who has been closely tracking the progress of the health care rollout. Welcome to both of you. So the reality test. Here's the report saying, "Dramatic progress, substantial progress, more work to do." Zeke, you wrote, in an op-ed some weeks ago that this was the time, "Thanksgiving weekend, this deadline was here." Is it good enough progress?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source