MSNBC " The Ed Show" - Transcript

Interview

Interviewer: Ed Schultz

SEN. JOHN BARRASSO ®, WYOMING: Great to be back with you, Ed.

SCHULTZ: Let‘s spar one more time, my friend. Let‘s get after it. I mean, you guys have got the deck stacked against the American people. You‘ve got big medical out there paying all these lobbyists. I mean, how in the world are we going to get a public option when this is the way the card game‘s being played?

BARRASSO: You know, you read that "Washington Post" story today, and it looks like the lobbyists were all on Senator Baucus‘, a Democrat, staff, before they got these big jobs. That‘s what it said in the "Washington Post" today.

I listen to the people of Wyoming. I was there last week talking to nurses, EMTs, ambulance people, folks who work at the hospitals, patients, people who want reform. They want a system that works. But they don‘t want this price tag and they want something that makes their lives better. They want to be able to buy insurance across state lines. They want to take care of things like pre-existing conditions so that that doesn‘t stop them from getting insurance.

But they don‘t see that what Bernie Sanders was talking about, which is a single payer, government-run program—the people of Wyoming do not see that as the answer for our country.

SCHULTZ: OK, but senator, do you get a sense from your state in the middle of the country, in the west, Wyoming, that they do want a public option? And you just said—

BARRASSO: No.

SCHULTZ: Pre-existing conditions; that‘s not the situation it is right now in America.

BARRASSO: Things we improve. You need to improve that. You can‘t buy insurance across state lines right now. If you‘re an individual and you buy insurance, you have to pay that with after tax dollars. Individuals buying insurance ought to get the same tax breaks the big companies have.

We need reform. But I don‘t think a public—what you call a public, what I call a government takeover, a government option, is not something that I support at all. And neither do the people of Wyoming who I talk to. They want choice, but they don‘t want the government to be running the show. They don‘t want the government making the decisions.

SCHULTZ: Senator Barrasso, I don‘t want that insurance company in between me and my doctor. Like if you were my doctor, and I know you were a doctor, I don‘t want the insurance company coming in saying, no, John, you can‘t help Ed on this one because we‘re not going to cover it.

BARRASSO: Nobody, nobody should be between you and your doctor. It should be between you and your doctor. Not an insurance bureaucrat, not a government bureaucrat.

SCHULTZ: Is there any way any Republicans would go along with a public option, or is your line drawn in the sand?

BARRASSO: I‘m going to have—participate again tomorrow morning in a bipartisan breakfast. Last Tuesday, we got together specifically to talk about this. Senator Baucus was there, as well as Senator Grassley. We had 16 members of the Senate, eight and eight. We‘re going to do the same thing tomorrow, to talk for solutions that can reform health care in this country, which is what American people want.

But I do not believe that a government-controlled plan is good for our country. I think it‘s bad. It‘s going to be very expensive. It is not what this nation needs.

SCHULTZ: I‘m going to do a field trip to Toronto, and I want to go up there and look at these long lines and see how they do things—

BARRASSO: Go to Alberta, where they limited the number of cataracts, and now it‘s a year line. Unless you‘re almost blind, you‘re not going to get your cataract operation, because they said we‘re going to pay for 2,000 fewer cataract operations this year than last year.

SCHULTZ: Senator, I‘ll go to Alberta if you‘ll come with me.

BARRASSO: Let‘s see what we can set up.

SCHULTZ: I‘m serious. I‘d like to go to Toronto. I want to talk to the folks that have some government involvement. We know the American people are open to this, the majority of them. Senator Barrasso, great to have you here with us.

BARRASSO: Great to be with you, Ed. Thank you.

SCHULTZ: You bet. I enjoy the dialogue. I don‘t agree with you.

But I enjoy and work on coming over to the good side on that. Will you?

BARRASSO: Don‘t count on it.

SCHULTZ: No, I won‘t. For more, let me bring in our panel tonight, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of "The Nation Magazine," also Sam Stein, political reporter for the "Huffington Post," and Tim Griffin, former deputy political director for George W. Bush and the White House there.

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