9 of 11

1

RCP: USA Today recently reported that the White House announced it will not overhaul the current employer-based insurance system, to which Donna Shalala, former HHS Secretary under President Clinton, agreed and said that “People who currently have health insurance and like it don't want you mucking around with it.”

Is Shalala’s criticism of your plan fair?

Senator Wyden: I think that’s right, and we’ve added a section to the new bill titled Guaranteeing You Can Keep The Coverage You Have. So we’re going to write it into the law. I joke with people and say we can add it to the Pledge of Allegiance or have the military guard it at the borders. But people feel very strongly about being able to keep the coverage they have if they choose it. The harder one I’d like to do is to say you can keep the coverage you have, but if one of these private choices appeals to you, then you can pursue one of these private choices. And benefit from the savings you generate.

I don’t know what you’re talking about in terms of the White House wanting this. The President has been very gracious and we’ve appreciated his kind comments about tax issues at the Summit.

My sense is that if you tick off the major things that the President talked about in his campaign, you have it in our legislation.

Reformers are very much more in agreement than there are areas that there are disagreements. Let me kind of tick them off. One of them is you have to cover everybody for the reasons I’ve talked about. Second, you ought to be able to keep the coverage you have. Third, you got to reform the private insurance markets, because it’s broken. Fourth, you’ve got to reward prevention. Fifth, would be the value of Health Information technology, which we pursued in the stimulus. There are many more areas of agreement than there are potential points of disagreement.

Full Transcript of the RCP-Wyden Interview