CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript

Interview

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HARRIS: The public option voted down twice in the health care reform debate. Is it gone for good? And where do things go from here? We are talking with senators from both parties. Up first, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon with us from Capitol Hill.

And, Senator, it's good to talk to you again. It's been a while.

SEN. RON WYDEN, (D) OREGON: You as well, Tony.

HARRIS: Good to see you.

WYDEN: Thank you.

HARRIS: All right. A couple of things we want to get to here. Does the public option, gone for now from the bill that you're working on in the Finance Committee, does it come back in either the melding of the health bill and whatever's passed by your committee, or -- or -- out of the final conference committee bill after the House and the Senate conferree's reconcile the two bills? And don't duck me on this.

WYDEN: Tony, I believe the final bill clearly will create more choices and more competition for the typical consumer. Right now that is the key to making coverage affordable. You've got a lot of middle- class families, maybe making $65,000, $66,000 a year, saying, I can't pay 19 percent or 20 percent of my income on health care. A way to hold their bills down is to create more choices. Those choices ought to be both public and private.

HARRIS: What's the percentage you're going to settle on here? I get that 19 percent is too much. We had an example with our senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, yesterday. A family making $44,000, paying $15,000 a year. And that's, what, about a third of the income -- that family income. What's the percentage that the committee is coalescing around here?

WYDEN: I don't think today you can just pluck a percentage out of the air. But certainly for middle-class folks, anything upward of 10 percent is going to be a real hardship. And, Tony, it doesn't have to be this way.

What I'm advocating is that all Americans have choices like their member of Congress. If their member of Congress gets clobbered by their insurance company in the fall of 2009, come January of 2010, they get to choose from more than a dozen policies where the insurance companies can't discriminate against them. There's no cream-skimming. They have low administrative costs. I'm going to insist that the final bill give all Americans choices like their member of Congress.

HARRIS: And because without what you're describing, where's the real competition come from that forces insurance companies to compete on cost?

WYDEN: Tony, you're being too logical. That's my argument. What this system does today is in most parts of the country it walls the insurance companies off from real competition and real accountability. What I want to do is turn the tables on the insurance lobby. Put the consumer in charge. Give the consumer clout like members of Congress have. That's how the consumer will get more affordable health care in the future.

HARRIS: All right, so bottom-line this for me here. At the end of the day, are we going to get kind of a public/private, hybrid, co- ops and the exchange and maybe a public option trigger if the health insurance don't make significant strides in cutting their costs?

WYDEN: I think, at the end of the day, Tony, the American people are going to insist on more choices, public and private. They're going to want those choices to look like what their elected officials get. I think anything else would be unacceptable.

HARRIS: Senator, good to see you.

WYDEN: Thanks for having me.

HARRIS: Thanks for your time. We'll let you get back to work.

WYDEN: Thank you. Thank you.

HARRIS: But come back early and often.

WYDEN: Do it again. Thank you.

HARRIS: All right. You've heard a Democrat's perspective on what's happening. Republican Senator John Cornyn will join us shortly.

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