Know about whos showing up in the garden state and why both sides are afraid of folks not showing up in the old dominion. Also today, a decade ago when Medicare Part d was in the hot seat on health care. Some folks are trying to compare it to the current rocky rollout. How much of the reception and the objections are actually similar to todays talk . Good morning from washington. Its tuesday, october 29th, 2013. This is the daily rundown. Im chuck todd. To my first reads of the morning. For more than thee years it was a key component of the president s sales pitch to the public, a promise he made repeatedly while selling the Health Care Law. If you like your Health Care Plan, you keep your Health Care Plan. These folks need to stop scaring everybody. If you like your Health Care Plan, you keep your Health Care Plan. Nobodys going to force you to leave your Health Care Plan. If you like your doctor, you keep seeing your doctor. I dont want government bureaucrats meddling in your health care. But the point is i dont want Insurance Company bureaucrats meddling in your health care either. If you like your private Health Insurance plan, you can keep it. If youre one of more than the 250 million americans who already have Health Insurance, you will keep your Health Insurance. Well, now, that promise is proving impossible to keep and were hearing from people who buy their insurance on the individual market like selfemployed realtor debra who recently got a notice from her insurer saying her policy will no longer be offered because of the new requirements in the law. All i want is what i currently have. I want to keep my doctors, and i would like to have lower premiums. The Health Care Law requires that all plans include Ten Essential Health benefits from Maternity Care to pediatric services. And though the law states that policies in effect as of march 23rd of 2010 will be grandfathered in, meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they dont meet those requirements of the new Health Care Law, nbc news investigative correspondent lisa myers has found that buried in 2010 regulations written by the department of health and human services, a reasonable range for the percentage of individual policies that would end up having to be terminated is 40 to 67 . There are 263 million americans with Health Insurance. Just over 100 million receive some kind of Government Insurance now. Think medicare, medicaid, tricare. Another 9. 8 have the direct purchase are on the individual marketplace. Of that, 3. 6 for covered by direct purchase alone. So the administration contends that though many of this groups policies will change, that they are changing for the better. What the president said and everybody said all along is there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care act to create minimum standards of coverage. Minimum services that every Insurance Plan has to provide. Maternity care is covered. The Preventive Services are covered. Mental Health Services are covered. The insurance policy you buy doesnt have an annual limit or a lifetime limit. That there are out of pockofp expense pences capped. In an interview on meet the press sunday, florida blue, which sent letters to about 300,000 people in the state saying their current plans would be terminated argued that doesnt mean theyre canceling insurance. The white house also points out that many people will get subsidies to help offset the higher cost, the administration, though, has put themselves in a bit of a pr box. In the long run, they believe that when people experience more benefits theyll accept this tradeoff. Right now its coming across simply as sticker shock and its clear that in the world of forprofit Insurance Company, the president made a pledge that it was impossible for him to keep. Expect the head of the center for medicare and Medicaid Services to get these twe kwes this morning when she testifies in a house hearing just about an hour from now. Meanwhile, the president will continue to try to sell enrollment. Tomorrow he travels to massachusetts monopo massachusetts. Dont be surprised if he touts the successes theyve modeled their Health Care Law on, romney care that was passed under governor mitt romney in 2006. In an interview with the new Cable Network fusion, the president made a personal pitch to the young and Healthy People that the white house hand insurers are depending on to sign up. I know that or at least i kind of remember when i was in my 20s and early 30s, i thought i was invincible, but it turns out i broke my nose playing basketball, it turns out that, you know, there were times with where i had unexpected illnesses or accidents, and making sure that you got coverage ensures that youre not ending up paying out of pocket thousands of dollars that you may not have. And so this is a good investment for young people. Nbcs Senior Investigative correspondent lisa myers joins me now. Okay, lisa. So the white house is arguing that somehow whats going on, number one, the letters that people are getting are not cancellation notices, that theyre notes to say your policy no longer meets standards, heres a new policy, but for some people its coming with a premium hike. Is that right . Thats correct. Some of them actually use the word cancellation. Others use the word termination or say its being replaced. But in both cases what you have are individuals who are not able to keep the policies they had even if they want to. Were finding people that did want to keep yes. One of the assumptions perhaps the white house incorrectly made was while these policies have so few benefits people wont like their policy, that somehow theyll like this one. Thats obviously one misper spepg misperception. We are talking strictly about the 14 people in the individual market. They are the ones who have been getting these letters. By and large they are irate. They did not expect to get these letters. But they thought they could keep what they had if they wanted to. This grandfather clause, this is whats confusing. The grandfather clause made it seem as if a lot of these people would fall into it. But the Insurance Companies make the decision about whether your policy is grandfathered in, not the administration. Correct . Well, but the experts say that the Insurance Companies have to follow the rules. And the rules are that if you had your policy based on march 23rd, 2010, you are grandfathered. But only if you havent had a significant change to your policy. Who determines that change . Is that an Insurance Company determination or an individual an individuals determination . Well, the Insurance Company would have to make the judgment. Okay. And whether and what could have changed that would cause you to lose grandfathering would be if your copay changes significantly, your deductible changes significantly, your benefit ls change somewhat. The problem is, in the administrations own regulations they said just because of the turn, the regular turn in the individual market, they knew all along that 40 to 67 of the folks in that market were not going to be able to qualify for grandfathering. So they were not going to be able to keep their benefits or keep the policy they wanted even if its a bad policy. They were supposed to be able to keep it. The head scratcher why did they have the president out there saying what he said if he would have simply said most people. Or even the vast majority probably would have held up. Let me ask you this. Insurance companies, are you finding any evidence that Insurance Companies are using the law or almost hiding behind the law to do their own premium hikes . Look, i cant tell whether thats the case. Certainly there are suspicions of that. I havent found any proof of it. The experts say the law is pretty clear and that this is where the Administration Says competition is supposed to come in and that people can choose among premiums and choose among plans. All right. Lisa myers, investigative correspondent, thank you, maam. You bet. All right. Well, if republicans end up keeping the house and keeping control of it next year, they believe theyll have one issue to thank and itS Health Care. Theyre hoping public anxiety and frustration over the new Program Replaces anxiety and frustration over the government shutdown, which drove gop approval numbers as low as 24 . I spoke with greg walden, chairman of the nrcc, the man in charge of keeping the house. Right now there are 231 republicans, 200 democrats and four vacant house seats. That means republicans have a pretty big margin of error. According to the cook political report, ten democratic seats are considered tossups but democrats also have a chance pick up seattles held by people like colorado republican mike kaufman, California Republican gary miller and the one vacated by bill young. Republicans could lose all of these and still hang onto the majority. If you toss in the seven democratic seats that the nrcc is targeting in districts that mitt romney won last year but democrats won the congressional seat, the partys margin for error gets even better. Joining me is republican congressman greg walden, the chairman and member of the energy and Commerce Committee. Congressman walden, good morning to you, sir. Chuck, good to be back with you. Let me ask you the basic question. Do you think the republican majority in the house is in jeopardy in 2014 . No, i dont. In fact, i think we have an opportunity to grow seats in 2014. Midterm elections are usually a referendum on the president and his party. And this president s got a lot of answering to do from certainly obama care and the economy to nsa and other topics that i think are going to be foremost on americans minds when they go to the ballot box in the fall of 2014. If this were october 2014 and not october 2013, how nervous would you be . Look, im always nervous going into an election and i usually come out of it pretty strong, but i never take any of them for granted. We have to do our job. We know were up against the campaigner in chief in Speaker Pelosi who wants to be back as speaker. Were doing our job. We have terrific recruit, a broad group of men and women from all over the country that really i think are going to be a new face for the Republican PartyGoing Forward and theyre going to be very effective. 17 of our 20 patron, you mentioned some of our incumbents being challenged, outrace their democrat counterparts and we have candidates around the country who are running against democrats who have outraised their democrats. You talk about primaries, you look at gary miller, you mentioned gary, aguilar that ran last time didnt make it on the ballot in california. He came in third in their jungle primary. He now faces a threeway very competitive and divisive primary. Let me ask you about this issue, though, having to defend the House Republican majority. Sure. Right now Congressional Republican favorable ratings are at alltime lows depending on the poll you look at but a lot of National Polls show that. I understand whats going on in individual districts and the districts look different from the national climate. But there is this issue here. Youve got to defend the shutdown strategy. What do you tell your members . How do you defend the shutdown strategy . I think part of it, chuck, is time will help here, but second and more importantly, being off the stage and lettinging you all actually report whats happening with obama care is already putting the democrats back on their heels. And the reports out overnight about the fact that the Obama Administration actually knew that maybe as high as 80 of people with individual policies would lose them, at the same time the president repeatedly said you can keep the policy you have if you like it, now you have to ask the question, when did he know it . What did he know . Well ask that question of secretary sebelius tomorrow in the energy and Commerce Committee. These are issues of trust that the democrats are going to have to respond to when we go into this election cycle a year from now. Do you have to campaign . Does your republican candidates have to campaign beyond do you have to not look like youre rooting for failure . Do you have to campaign on a solution that i mean, one thing the House Republicans havent had is their own Health Care Plan to run on. Right. I know paul ryan was coming up with one. Is that the idea that youll rally around what paul ryan is writing for january . Well, first of all, two things. One, you do have to talk about how youre going to solve problems, which is what we did in the energy and Commerce Committee last week, figuring hout how do you waste 600 million, what they wasted on solyndra, and have a website that doesnt work . Well get to the bottom of that. Whether you like obama care or not, i dont want us to waste 600 million on a site do you want it to work . Do you want the president s Health Care Law to succeed . Its the law. I didnt vote for it, i dont like it, we had lots of alternative, but we were shut out of that process fully, a point often overlooked. We had 85 amendments to go to the house floor to put out our proposal and nancy pelosi wouldnt let us have a single vote on a single amendment. You remember how they crammed this through in the dark of night. Nobody had a chance to read it or understand it. Thats why it is the mess it is today. Do you want it to succeed . Do you want it to succeed . I dont want it to fail. I dont want it to fail. If its the law, its the law. I want it to be repealed and replaced. And if we get the opportunity and have the votes well do that. Let me talk about these primary challenges. Youve got one. Youve got a handful of incumbents. Is it automatic, by the way, that the nrcc backs all their incumbents, period . Actually, its automatic that we dont get involved in primaries. Thats rule 11, a letter from the rnc. So both parties have competitive primaries. Youre not going to get involved in incumbent primary, though . We dont. We havent. We dont spend money on them p. Youre not going to do that. Okay. No. The point here is both party have pretty primary challenges. I mentioned gary miller thats divided their party. Look at Mike Mcintyre, north carolina. You could go around the country, both parties have primaries. They focus more on ours because i guess thats the story du jour. Well, its a pretty big story in your party, congressman. Its not a its a pretty its a bigger split right now than whats going on in the democratic side nationally. But have you done a story on the one in gary millers race . Have you looked at whats happening . Look at the party switch we are evan jenkins running against nick jo ray haul. He went from republican to democrat and hes going to beatnik. Do you think the president of the United States will get a call from nick to come into West Virginia . You dont think hes going to campaign in West Virginia . Do you think hell come in for Mike Mcintyre . They have to run against barack obama and the Obama Administration they consistently vote against. So i think theyve got a lot of explaining to do. Let me ask you about that special election down in florida, tampa bay, classic swing district, political junkies like myself. Probably overread the results because thats what we do. But how important is it . Its important. If you lose it, then suddenly, you know what, you have to be more nervous about the national climate. I think people reach too much in to special elections. Both parties have won and lost elections that a lot of prognosticators have said there goes the party this way or that way. And in the end there are special elections, theyre called special for a reason. We want to win that seat. Florida is a very important state and this is a very important district. I think voter will want to continue the terrific work and legacy of bill young in that seat. We are talking as late as last night with some really terrific candidates that can come forward. Their candidate, alice sink, has to move in from another city to even run in this district and she couldnt get elected governor. I think youll find shes not come patable in this district, although shell start with high name i. D. Do you want the congress mabs widow to run . You know, were going to let republicans pick who the best candidate is there. Widow to run . You know, were going to let republicans pick who the best candidate is there. Bill young is a close friend, a personal counselor to me, a dear friend and patriot and servant of america and well see what plays out there. Greg walden, the nrcc chairman, republican congressman from the state of oregon. Thanks for coming on. Chuck, good to b