Reporter very rich, but not very punctual. Jeanne moos, cnn, new york. Thank you so much for joining us. Ac 360 with anderson starts right now. Good evening. Thanks for joining us. Breaking news tonight in the russia investigation. New reporting how interested the fbi seems to be in carter page. The story detailing how many times page has been questioned already, what hes been asked about and told investigators. Page himself, calling the encounters extensive. In a moment, the correspondent who broke the story. But we begin with the Health Care Replacement billion. 22 million fewer people with insurance by 2026. That, according to the congressional budget office. Also big Deficit Reduction. However, its that 22 million estimate that could be politically toxic to some republican moderates, one of
whom weighed in late tonight. So a lot to get to, starting with phil mattingly. What else is in the cbo report . Reporter you start with that tom line number, anderson. You know its important, particularly for moderate senator. Several pointed to the Coverage Number before the cbo report released and said their vote may be contingent on that. 22 million fewer would have insurance over the course of a tenyear period. The senate bill takes a different approach than the house bill to try and address the house bills coverage problems. The house bill had 23 million. The senate has a more robust tax credit. They phase out medicaid over a slower amount of time. You also need to hook at the Medicaid Cuts or the reductions in medicaid spending based on dramatic reforms in the medicaid program. 772 billion will be spent over the course of ten years. You noted the Deficit Reduction. This is very important. 3 321 billion the Deficit Reduction in this bill. The house bill has a baseline of about 133 billion. The senate has to at least match that. So they have matched that about they have about 220 billion to work with. When you look at moderates who are concerned how deeply this bill comes back on things like medicaid, Mitch Mcconnell has a pot of money to work with. But as is always the case here, theres a push and a pull. If you start spending such of that money on say opioid recovery grants, you have conservatives who are concerned about the spending and the Medicaid Phaseout as is. They might revolt. One other quick item, conservatives have been very keen on one specific issue, lowering premiums. Thats their be all, end all. If you look at the cbo report, there is good news on that front. By 2020, premiums for individual plans would drop by 30 . One of five mainers are on medicaid. So her insistence shell vote no on the ability to move forward on this senate bill, a vote were expecting tomorrow or wednesday is problematic. She becomes the third republican senator to say they wont even vote to get to the votes on the bill itself. So that throws kind of a wrinkle into the process. But also if you think about what senator dean heller of nevada said friday, what senator rand paul has been saying now for weeks and then you put into context what senator collins said in those tweets, they are taking apart piece by piece by piece very central components of this bill saying they are not good enough, they need major changes. Do they have the time to try and get these senators back in the fold by the time this week is out . That is an open question right now. They still want to get a vote by the end of this week, but theres no question, there is a lot of work to do and the cbo report didnt help. Phil, thank you very much for
the update. The white house put out a statement, critical of the cbo, reading the cbo has consistently proven it cannot accurately predict how legislation will predict insurance coverage. I want to bring in my panel. Gloria, the big headline, 22 million more people being left uninsured if the bill passes. Is that too much for some republicans to swallow . You havent heard republicans say the cbo is so great, im going to support the bill. It obviously makes them nervous and shows that in ten years, youre going to have 15 million fewer medicaid enrollees, and you saw the tweet from Susan Collins where shes worried about that in the state of maine. This affects older people. It affects lower income people. And i think that what you see here are republicans getting more and more nervous about voting for this bill. And i spoke with one senator today who said look, why are we
in such a rush to do this . We know that Mitch Mcconnell wants to get this done before the recess, so we dont go home to angry constituents. But this senator said, i think i need to hear from my constituents. Maggie, what is the rush . I think gloria is right in terms of the position that senators are finding themselves in. The rush comes from the fact that as time drags on, as we know with this type of legislation, if you look at where things are and how hard sit to get one vote that were talking about from those three possibly movable senators, the longer things go, the harder it becomes. This is why you see Senate Majority leadership trying to shove this through. Its also what The White House would like to see. The white house made the calculation that republicans have campaigned for several cycles on repealing obamacare. They now have control of both houses of congress. They have legislation with which to do it. But make no mistake, it is very difficult to take away an
hang your hat on, and theres room to negotiate now. Mcconnell now has some room to run with the individual senators. So it was not unexpected that the cbo score would set off a round of hand wringing. But theres room to negotiate, and i really hope republicans remember what we ran on, which is cut taxes, cut the deficit, cut premiums, and the bill right now under the current framework does that. Van, what about that . To the point, the president did say hes not going to cut medicaid, but is this what republicans ran on . I dont think its what donald trump ran on. Part of the thing that goes wrong is we talk about this in a partisan prism. Its republican thing, a democratic thing. This is not going to be a republican policy. Its not going to be a democratic policy. Its going to be the american policy when it comes to health care. And what were going to be saying is, if you are poor, and you get sick, we just dont care
they do have a history of inaccuracy. But lets pretend theyre 100 right. Theres some percentage of this 22 million that would have never gotten coverage in the first place, including some people who signed up for medicaid that might not otherwise have signed up if it was not forced upon them by the government. So that is a fact that we have to deal with here. Theres some people in this country that just wouldnt want to buy Health Insurance. So you can call it mean, and if thats what the president said, and i know thats what he said he said. But again, theres a group of people that its not being mean to, because they wouldnt have bought nit the first place. But those same people, the moocher caucus who say if were not going to buy this, but if they slip on a banana peel, they go to the Emergency Room and we all pay for that. So obamacare said you just cant be a moocher, you have to pay in if you want to pull out. Now the republicans have become
the promoocher party. They love the fact that youve got a bunch of people that want to believe free riders in the system. I dont understand, the Republican Party has literally flipped upside down under trump. Makes no sense at all. Under vans argument, anderson, hes assuming that every Single Person who signed up actually paid their premiums. It is true, a bunch of people signed up and never paid in. So you can pretend like theres no moochers on the system right now, but a whole bunch of people signed up and never paid their premiums after they signed up. Go ahead, gloria. I want to add to maggies good point earlier. What you are doing here, whether people paid their premium or didnt pay their premium, they believe they have Health Insurance, whether they Medicaid Expansion gave them Health Insurance or not. What youre asking members of congress to do is take something
away. Thats very difficult. Once people have it, they dont want to get rid of it, which is why we call it entitlement programs. On top of that, you add in the fact that the major stake holders, the american medical association, the hospital association, the aarp, theyre all opposed to this. They can go out and campaign against it. And i think it makes it very difficult for a republican senator, no matter how conservative and what your argument is, or if youre susan colins in the state of mairne, o go to your older voters and say were taking away health care. An additional point i would make is that you have a president who has been, as he often is, he treats everything like its an open ended negotiation. So hes been on various sides of his own bill essentially. It is my bill, its not my bill. Youre asking members of congress to go out now and essentially campaign on and Risk Campaigning for 2018 on votes
medicaid. One thing that we are viewing this bill through the prism of, were taking away, but maybe we ought to view it through the prism of we overextended ourselves and promised something we cant afford and now were having to do reforms to bring it in alignment of what we can deliver. Another issue is this. Under the current medicaid system, you get more reimbersment for covering able bodied people than disabled people. Under the way medicaid works, it is disadvantaging people who have disabilities in favor of people on the Reimbursement Rates that are able bodied. Some reform is necessary to save medicaid for the people who actually need it the most. He did say there would be no more cuts, and were talking over 700 billion. Go ahead, van. I agree that there are all kinds of ways to improve our system. But play thing fuzzy math where were spending a whole bunch of
money, i think were spending too much money on the Health Care System because i think we have too many big private Insurance Companies that are ripping us off. There are other solutions, like single payer. There are other countries doing a better job. Im all for reform. What im not for is giving massive tax breaks, Massive Give Aways to rich people and throwing poor people under the bus. Youre going to have to deal with the fact that a lot of people voted for trump because he said he was going to bring the premiums down. The premiums that are coming down are coming down because youre going to be paying less for crappier coverage. Thats not what people wanted. And so listen, were now in a situation where the reformers, who have good ideas, are being drowned out by the people who are just hard core against programs to help poor people and it will come back to bite you guys. More Breaking News to talk about in the russia probe. The fbi has questioned carter
page extensively. The question is why . Ill talk to the reporter who broke the story. Choicehotels. Com. Badda book. Badda boom. Thats it . He means book direct at choicehotels. Com for the lowest price on our rooms guaranteed. Plus earn free nights and instant rewards at checkin. Yeah. Like i said. Book now at choicehotels. Com
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that he was questioned extensively, but i dont know what carter page knows and what he can provide them. I watched his interview with you, you know, several weeks back, and it was mystifying in terms of what he was trying to communicate. He did a couple of other Tv Interviews around that time. You know, the Trump Campaign did name him, did identify him as somebody working with them during the campaign, but then they distanced himself. I have no indication he had any interaction with President Trump, but hes become somebody that authorities are Interested In questioning, and it adds to the drip, drip nature of what were seeing with this probe. Gloria, i interviewed carter page back in march and his role or lack of role how he advised Candidate Trump. I want to play some of that. Did you ever brief donald trump as a candidate or President Elect . President trump, i never
briefed him. In reality did you ever meet him if i never shook his hand. Ive been in many rallies with him from arizona to north dakota to many in new york. Rallies . Which is meetings. So the hundreds of thousands of people who have been to rallies ive been in smaller rallies so hundreds of thousands of people who have been to donald trump rallies, can they say theyve been to meetings with donald trump . Ive been in smaller ones, as well. Its possible that he was he was named at one point when donald trump needed to name some Foreign Policy people, but it doesnt seem like he had much of a role. I think he attended one dinner, not that the president was even there, for other People Associated with the campaign. And maybe he sort of talked up his credentials in moscow when
he was there in front of reporters by saying he had been in meetings with the president. But his definition of meetings are rallies that thousands of people attended. Well, its very clear from your interview, and from watching carter page in other interviews, that he wasnt a confidant of donald trump. He didnt advise him ever one on one on Foreign Policy. So its interesting that the fbi is spending so much time talking to him. So i bet what theyre looking at is what his relationship with the russians was, and whether the russians thought that he would be more of a conduit than he actually was. And maybe they, you know, maybe they took a look at him and said oh, hes on this list, and weve known him over the years, and we have a relationship with him, and maybe he could be helpful to us. With donald trump at some point
in the future. I dont know if thats what you think the fbi might be Interested In, but it seems to me his relationship with the russians would be a lot of interest. And in your article, to carter page, he seemed happy with the end result of these interviews. He said to you that it restored his faith in some of the people in the fbi. Right. And i think thats how he approaches this whole issue. He feels that hes being smeared publicly, and he feels like he can explain himself adequately. So in his mind, theres nothing to quoshlworry about. You have to remember that carter page is one of the first investigative issues in this whole russia question, going back to the summer. So hes one of the people that the fbi is Interested In first. Hes also one of the we reported previously that there was a fisa warrant out on his communications precisely because
of what gloria mentioned, which was this concern that he may be in regular contact with russian officials who are maybe steering him in some way or manipulating him in some way. All of which he denies by the way, but that was the concern. And i think frankly the questioning shows it was still a concern then. Interesting. Thanks to everybody. Coming up, The White House saying another Washington Post article makes it clear there was no collusion between russia and the president and his associates and the Obama Administration knew there was no collusion. To put it bluntly, thats not what the article says at all. Were keeping them honest on that. And another strange Press Briefing, next. Now you drive 300 miles to watch this. Yes, nice pop