CNN "American Morning" - Transcript

Interview

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Senator Grassley, thanks for being with us this morning.

SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY, (R-IOWA) RANKING MEMBER, FINANCE COMMITTEE: Glad to be with you, Kiran.

CHETRY: So just give us an update, because after months of working to try to hammer out this bill that Republicans could support you are going to vote against the measure coming out of your own committee today. What has changed?

GRASSLEY: I think what has changed basically we have a plan where the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation says that people's premiums are going to go up, and one of the things that people have been crying for to grassroots is cap the cost of insurance to some extent. But for sure it will go up.

And then we are going to mandate that everybody has to have health insurance. And if you don't have health insurance, a family will pay $1,500 more to the internal revenue service for not doing it.

And then another reason, and maybe a bigger reason, is it is going to affect senior citizens, particularly those that have Medicare Advantage, with either a reduction of benefits or an increase in premiums, and it is going to take $444 billion out of Medicaid -- out of Medicare, I should say.

CHETRY: Let me ask you about this, because the sticking point seems to have changed along the way. You also said that you don't like the individual mandate anymore, right, to requiring people to buy insurance or face penalties? You don't like that in this bill.

GRASSLEY: No.

CHETRY: But back in June you said there was bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates. So what's changed with that?

GRASSLEY: You know, I think that I misread our caucus. There were people that talked about individual responsibility. And at the grassroots of America, I'm telling you, when I was home for my July Fourth break, not the raucous ones we had in August, but just very quietly, when people found out that the House of Representatives had put out a bill that was going to charge people $1,000 penalty if they didn't have a health insurance, there was a tremendous reaction against that at the grassroots of America.

And maybe I was reading it as a lot of states require automobile drivers to have insurance, that personal responsibility like that maybe was good thing. But when it comes to health insurance, health insurance is a much more personal thing. It's almost something you have to have.

And there's a tremendous reaction to it a negative reaction to it at the grassroots.

CHETRY: And Senator Grassley, that has led some of your critics to say that this is a political calculation, that you are up for reelection in 2010 and that you don't want to put yourself out there in terms of appearing on the side of the Democrats took to pass health care reform. What do you say to that?

GRASSLEY: Well, that's pretty easy to speak to, because what is democracy all about? It's all about communication between the grassroots of America and what goes on here in Washington. If you don't have that, you don't have representative government.

So, you know, I hold town hall meetings and in every one of Iowa's 99 counties in Iowa every year, and I will tell you, you will get feedback. And if you want to represent that view, and I'm telling you, the people of our state were reacting negatively to the individual mandate. CHETRY: All right, well, I want to ask you about the other thing you brought up as well, the cost. The Congressional Budget Office has said that this will come in under the $900 billion mark. That's what they had been hoping for and it will actually not add to the deficit.

But just on Monday, this week, a lot of controversy over this report that came you on from the insurance industry saying that the Baucus proposal would cost more over 20 years than doing nothing.

And Democrats are very unhappy with this. They say that this bill was paid for by the -- the study paid for by the insurance industry and insurance lobby and it actually is a, quote, "hatchet job" is what people in your committee, the Democrats and your committee have said. What do you think about this coming out in the 11th hour?

GRASSLEY: Well, I'm a little surprised at it coming out, because, quite frankly, we don't need a report from the industry to tell us that, because the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the Congressional Budget Office -- and these are not political people, these are professional people that have to be intellectually honest.

They are saying that there's going to be a pass-through of these taxes to premium holders and premiums are going to go up. And then the other thing that surprises me is because the insurance industry from way back in November has been pushing for this reform. They've been pushing hard.

Do you know why they've been pushing hard? Because with the individual mandate and you have the government forcing people to buy health insurance, they're going to have 50 million people buying health insurance that didn't have health insurance before. And, of course, that gets back to the individual mandate and the philosophical problems with it. But more important the practical problems that people that don't want to buy health insurance are going to be taxed $1,500 for a family with additional payments to the Internal Revenue Service if you don't want to do that.

CHETRY: You know, there have been some -- and I know that people in the House, Anthony Weiner, that we've spoken to before say, you know, this is basically a moral issue. The bottom line is, is that people need to be able to get basic health care services.

Where do the Republicans stand right now? As all of these bills go back and forth, they're going to go in conference, they're going to go in committee, are you guys giving up on taking part in health care reform?

GRASSLEY: Oh, not at all. You know, we don't get much credit for it. But over the -- since January, there's been four very major Republican bills put in. And you can get a lot of Republicans at the table if we could just have one thing that would bring down health care costs tremendously. And that's tort reform. Medical malpractice liability reform so that the lawyers aren't taking a bunch of money out of the health care system and that -- and so that we don't have the practice of defensive medicine. CHETRY: Right.

GRASSLEY: You know, about 10 percent of the cost of medicine is from the sensing...

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CHETRY: Then let me just ask you, so you're saying that they would take up the issue of tort reform, that that's the one sticking point? If they would take up tort reform then much more -- many more Republican would come to the table and pass health care reform.

GRASSLEY: It's not only at the grassroots of America but within -- but within the Congress as a whole, among at least 50 percent of the Congress. Tort reform is a very major thing and why.

I started to say because 10 percent of the cost of medicine is a practice of defensive medicine because doctors give you a bunch of tests that maybe you don't need because they think you're going to sue them so they give you every test under the sun so they've got a defense if you do sue them. And if we could get tort reform under control, and do away with these frivolous lawsuits, it would cut down on the cost of medicine.

But you know, the Democrats don't want to do that because they get all of their campaign funds from the tort attorneys. Ninety-seven percent of that money and check with the FEC, it goes to Democrats.

CHETRY: All right. Well, we're going to have to leave it there today. Senator Grassley, I know that your committee is taking up this issue. It's likely to pass but not with any support from Republicans.

Senator Charles Grassley, thanks for joining us this morning.

GRASSLEY: Glad to be with you.

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