NBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript: Affordable Care Act and Republicans

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Well, U.S. Congresswoman Gwen Moore`s a Democrat from Wisconsin, and Jonathan Gruber is an MIT professor in economics. He was a key architect of the Massachusetts health care overhaul. He also served as an adviser to the White House and to Congress on the president`s health care plan.

Congresswoman, I want to start with you. I think somebody from Mars would watch the Congress these days and say, What are those people so angry about? Fighting like mad from the Republican side with all this anguish and almost frightening anger.

And I get the feeling it`s not about whether the program is working or not. What they are angry about, the Democrats and angry about the president and angry about this health care program, is they don`t like the effort.

They`re angry that anybody tried to make sure that the four or five -- or 40 or 50 million people sitting, as working people, in the emergency room looking for some health care are being taken care of or being thought (ph) after. They don`t like that effort.

And that`s why they`re really angry, not that there are glitches. They don`t like trying to do something for these people because they don`t want to lift themselves up off their butts to do it. Your thoughts.

REP. GWEN MOORE, (D), WISCONSIN: Oh, Chris, absolutely. When you stop and think about the Ryan budget, for example, we would have seen 14, 15 million people thrown off Medicaid. There`s no secret that Republicans do not like the notion of universal health care. And the Affordable Care Act is just another iteration of that. We saw this happen with the rollout of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Any of these so-called entitlements Republicans have not liked. They want government to be the handmaiden of business. They just don`t believe in the American people taking care of each other.

MATTHEWS: When I listen to people like especially Ted Cruz, I hear every word he speaks could just as well have been written in attacking Social Security back in the mid-`30s, or early `30s, attacking Medicare in the early `60s and Medicaid, the same lingo. This is government socialism. This is Fidel Castro with an American accent.

Let me go -- let me go to Jonathan Gruber.

I have got -- I have heard great word about you, sir, and what you know. And I want to go to that question to you. I know you`re an analyst and an expert, but what is the anger about when you see these Republicans gnarling away and snarling away at the secretary of health and education and welfare the other day? What are they angry about?

JONATHAN GRUBER, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: Chris, I can`t
pretend to read their minds.

But let`s look at the simple facts. The simple facts are that Obamacare is built on Romneycare. And Romneycare is built on conservative notions proposed by the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s to oppose the Clinton health care reform.

Massachusetts Governor Romney adopted those ideas and made them the centerpiece of his law. President Obama, despite the fact in the election he was opposed to the mandate, recognized it was a system that had worked well in Massachusetts, with us covering two-thirds of our uninsured citizens. And it was broadly popular.

He, to his credit, changed his views, adopted the mandate. And once he put his name to it, suddenly the right-wing disliked it. One key fact to keep in mind, Chris, when Governor Romney signed this law in 2006, on the stage with him was a speaker from the Heritage Foundation talking what a victory -- about what a victory this was for conservative principles.

Suddenly it`s the devil`s work. I don`t see any argument, other than it`s just ugly partisan politics.

MATTHEWS: OK. Let me -- you start with this question. Among the president`s problems are that he again and again said that if you have an insurance policy -- and that meant most people thought they had a good insurance policy or they wouldn`t have it -- felt they could be left alone, those people who bought their insurance on their own, not through their employer.

Now they`re being told by their insurance companies that those programs, those policies aren`t going to exist anymore. What do you think was wrong, if you did think anything was wrong, in the way the president said the idea that you would be held harmless, you would be left alone with no paperwork or whatever if you had a good policy?

GRUBER: I mean, Chris, the president probably should have made a somewhat vaguer statement about in general you will be left alone, because, look, the bottom line is 80 percent of Americans get insurance from their employer or the government, and they`re not affected.

We`re talking about the small slice, maybe 5 to 6 percent of Americans, who buy insurance on their own. And even within that small slice, most -- about half of those people will be able to simply replicate what they have today. Maybe the name of the plan will be different, the deductible will change a little bit, but they can just go out and buy pretty much what they have today.

It`s a very small slice of Americans who will literally have to change their insurance plan. And that`s largely because they`re in crappy insurance that doesn`t really protect them against real financial risk, so we`re asking them to buy real insurance.

MATTHEWS: So you can say it`s junk insurance they have, most of them, that are having a problem today? They didn`t really have a good policy.

GRUBER: I don`t know if it`s most of them, but it`s -- yes, a large share of them don`t have a good policy. Either it`s a policy that doesn`t cover hospital care, a policy that doesn`t cover mental health, or a policy that has a $15,000 deductible, which doesn`t protect them from bankruptcy.

MATTHEWS: Well, if that`s the case, it`s solid.

Let me go back to Congresswoman Moore.

You know, I noticed something in the paper today. I don`t like to get ethnic all the time, but sometimes it seems relevant. Did you notice that there`s a racial divide in the attitudes of people towards Obamacare? I wouldn`t be surprised if part of that racial divide, without jumping to too many conclusions, was based on it was called Obamacare. Your thoughts.

MOORE: Oh, absolutely.

I think that the first African-American president certainly has had a rough time overcoming some of the racial stereotypes and prejudices that many people have. But the reality is, Chris, that a great disproportionate number of people who are going to benefit from the Affordable Care Act are, in fact, African-Americans, because they are in the lower-income echelons of our society.

So they`re going to benefit by the expansion of Medicaid and/or they`re going to benefit by going into the exchange and the individual market because they`re unemployed, they`re disproportionately unemployed, and don`t have employer-based insurance, or they`re working for small struggling businesses that can`t or haven`t insured them to this point.

And so there`s no question that African-Americans are going to enjoy a great benefit from the Affordable Care Act.

MATTHEWS: I love it. I love these polls because they put the big lie to the fact that the right wing always says, you know, African-Americans are on welfare, they`re on the dole, they don`t want to work.

In fact, people who are on welfare are covered by Medicaid and have been covered by Medicaid, the people at the bottom. It`s the working person that gets up and catches the bus and goes to work 40, 50 hours a week that will benefit from this. And they know it and the other side knows it and doesn`t give a damn.

Let me go back to expert here, Jonathan Gruber.

Is -- when will we get to a point -- if you`re an optimist. And I hear you are. What will be the month, hopefully the month when the victories scored by the health care bill, the Affordable Care Act, outweigh the criticisms, where people say, you know what, I think most Americans are happy with this system?

GRUBER: Chris, to be honest, I think that`s going to be well into 2014.

MATTHEWS: Next year.

GRUBER: We have to recognize the slow pace -- yes, well, into next year.

We have to recognize the slow pace of enrollment. In Massachusetts, it took about a year for us to ramp up from when people could first pay for premiums and sign up. That first month, 123 people signed up. By the end of the year, it was 36,000. It`s going to take a while to ramp it up.

The key date to keep an eye on, Chris, is that date of March 31. That`s the date by which people have to have insurance to avoid the individual mandate penalty. I think once we get past that date and we have a lot of people insured, people will start to recognize that the winners really outweigh the losers.

But that`s only if we`re willing as a society to recognize the importance
of aggregates and not anecdotes.

MATTHEWS: I agree.

GRUBER: There`s always going to be anecdotes about people complaining about this or losing in this dimension.

We have to recognize the winners are going to vastly outnumber the losers. We can`t let the noise over the few losers swamp the gains by the enormous number of winners.

MATTHEWS: Well, there`s a reason why "Reader`s Digest" is popular, by the way. Anecdotes do carry the day an awful lot. People are used to anecdotes.

Let me ask you a political question. The second Tuesday -- the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November next year, which is Election Day, will this thing be settled by then?

GRUBER: It depends what you define as settled.

(CROSSTALK)

GRUBER: Oh, I`m sorry.

MATTHEWS: Go ahead, Congresswoman. You first, because you`re in the business.

MOORE: I think Democrats and Republicans are both at risk in November of 2014.

But right now, the public is more angry at Republicans for shutting the government down. And to the extent that they have done it to prevent people from getting health care is not inuring to their benefit. I mean, as a Democrat, I`m hoping to really exploit the foolishness of Republicans, and to demonstrate to the American people that they don`t deserve -- they need to be de-selected for their lack of leadership and for their unwillingness to bring a common commodity such as good health care to people.

MATTHEWS: It`s great having you on, Congresswoman.

MOORE: Thank you.

MATTHEWS: Thank you, U.S. Congresswoman Gwen Moore of Wisconsin and Jonathan Gruber, who is a guy we`re going to have back on many times, I hope.

Up next: What`s more frightening than a government shutdown? Well, how about the scary political costumes that are hot this Halloween?

This is HARDBALL, the place for politics.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source