MSNBC "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" - Transcript

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

O"DONNELL: For more on where things stand in the Senate, let"s turn to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a member of the Senate Finance Committee and its subcommittee on health care.

Good evening, Senator.

SEN. RON WYDEN (D), OREGON: Good evening, Larry.

O"DONNELL: Senator, what do you say to Howard Dean"s advice that you vote no on this Senate bill as it stands today.

WYDEN: I simply don"t agree, Larry. You don"t win the fights for social justice in round one. I think the governor makes a lot of points about areas that we need to strengthen, but let"s go to the bottom line. If after we"re done with the Congressional Budget Office and Senator Reid has worked on all the amendments, after we"ve reached out to the Republicans, if this bill fails, there will be champagne corks popping all over Washington, D.C., in the offices of the far-right.

What we"ve got to do is lay a foundation. Reformers are going to be at this for years to come. And let me tell you: we"ll be at it long after cable news stops covering this 24/7.

O"DONNELL: Now, Governor Dean has said that this is friendly--this bill is friendly to the insurance companies. Others are saying it is a complete, total victory for the health insurance companies. And Governor Dean--you just heard him say this is not real reform.

What is your response to that line of argument about it?

WYDEN: My response is, there are some reforms here that we have worked on for years and years, since literally back in the days when I was co-director of the Oregon Gray Panthers. The current way insurance is conducted is inhumane. It"s all about cherry-picking, just taking healthy people, sending sick people over to government programs, more fragile than they are. That is outlawed.

We protect people from pre-existing conditions. We make sure that you can"t rescind these policies, just cancel "em because somebody is sick.

The governor mentioned the exchanges, the new market place. I think we"re going to strengthen those in the years ahead. I just want to get them in place. I want to see us get more choices. If that exchange doesn"t hold down costs, we can add more competitive features in the years ahead, such as getting that public option that I feel so strongly about.

O"DONNELL: Did President Obama say anything in the meeting with Democratic senators today that can change the momentum? This thing is obviously pretty stalled in the Senate right now. It seems very difficult to get it done before the end of this year.

Did anything happen in that room today with the president to change the way things are going on the Senate floor?

WYDEN: I thought there was a lot of common ground in that room. I thought you heard a president say, "Look, we are on the cusp of history." We have been working on this since the middle of the last century, Larry.

President after president has tried.

The one point that I would disagree with the governor on, is, I think, if it goes down now--if the bill fails, if this effort tanks, the next president, the next Congress is going to say, "Look, this is just too hard, the special interest groups are too powerful, let"s stay away from it." We have got to lay the foundation now. We"re committed to doing that.

O"DONNELL: Senator, is there any line that you have, that if this bill crosses you won"t be able to vote for it?

WYDEN: I think what we"re looking at now, and we"re all waiting for the Congressional Budget Office, and certainly the manager"s proposal that Senator Reid is talking about, lays the kind of foundation that I can support.

We"re going to see 31 million people get what amounts to a lifeline, Larry. These are folks who go to bed every night in a cold sweat, worried that they"re going to be wiped out the next day if illness strikes. We have historic insurance reforms because of Senator Harkin. We"ve got historic prevention reform.

We don"t really have health care at all in this country. We"ve got sick care. And now, we"re making bold changes towards a new system based on prevention. That"s real reform.

O"DONNELL: Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon--thank you very much for your time tonight.

WYDEN: Thank you for having me.

O"DONNELL: Coming up: A lot of very different, very passionate views on the way forward for health care reform. We"ll talk the political stakes for the White House, for the Democratic Party at large, with Howard Fineman.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source